The Human Son

by Adrian J. Walker

  ‘But you have some interest in it?’

  She raised her chin. Straightened her back. The hoods of her eyes became more visible.

  As I have said, I find certain facial expressions difficult to decrypt. They were simple when we spoke in silence, but ertian body language has, like all behaviours, grown ever more subtle and complex. I have lived roughly two-thirds of my life alone, spending over 330 years either in the upper atmosphere, analysing data in the dark Halls of Reason, traversing glaciers, pulling ice cores from vast tundra, or asleep. All of these years have been without contact, and I expect this has some bearing upon why I fail to detect certain nuances.

  So when Magda raised her chin and straightened her back and showed the hoods of her eyes, I was unsure of what she meant. However, I suspected she was showing defiance.

  ‘I do have an interest, Ima. Yes, I do.’

  ‘Please explain.’

  She nodded at you.

  ‘I was awoken last night by that thing. Many times.’

  ‘As was I. And it was four times. Four is not many.’

  ‘Four is many, Ima, when zero is the expected number. I am tired.’

  ‘As am I.’

  ‘And it makes that noise during the day as well. It is of great disturbance. To everyone.’

  I looked past her at the circle of dwellings. There were faces at windows. Three figures stood at their doors, watching. Beyond them warm rain drizzled on the forested hills.

  ‘Do you normally live in silence, Magda?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean precisely what I ask. Are there no other noises in your life? The birds in the hills, for example? Or the waves against Fane’s sand? Our horses often whinny. Should we go and complain to them together?’

  We faced each other in silence for a moment. You finished feeding and retracted from me with a gasp, then let out a single cry—which I recognised as satisfaction—that echoed around the stone circle. Magda’s eyes narrowed and a smile drew upon her lips. This time I knew exactly what her expression meant.

  ‘There is nothing in Fane that sounds like that,’ said Magda. ‘You know that very well.’

  This was quite enough.

  My siblings and I happen to be spread out fairly evenly across the seventy-five settlements, such that no more than three ever live in one place. There appears to be no particular reason for this, although I am sure the distribution could be analysed and explained if required.

  I am the only one of my generation in Fane. I can, in short, pull rank.

  I wrapped you and replaced my breast, then stepped out onto the porch so that I stood face to face with Magda.

  ‘Is there a purpose to your visit, Magda?’ I said, confining my voice to frequencies I know to carry gravitas, and allowing spaces between certain words. My affectation had the desired effect, and Magda’s head retreated by some degree. ‘Do you, in fact, have any purpose at all?’

  ‘I… My expertise is in agricultural…’

  I interrupted her.

  ‘Our work is done, Magda. Surely you are aware of this?’

  ‘I…’

  And once again.

  ‘Surely you have noticed that you no longer go to work in your fields? Surely you have noticed that your days are now filled with… nothing?’

  She frowned, floundering for words.

  ‘What is the point of you, Magda? That is what I am asking you.’

  ‘Ima, there really is no need to…’

  And one final time.

  ‘Your purpose is complete. Finished. Mine…’ I raise your slumbering head to show her. ‘…is just beginning.’

  I looked around the circle at the faces peering through windows, the figures standing in doorways, and raised the amplitude of my voice just a little.

  ‘So I would appreciate it if you would allow me to proceed unhindered.’ My eyes returned to Magda. ‘Please.’

  Magda said nothing. Her mouth was shut.

  I returned inside, closed the door, and placed you, asleep, on the bed. Then, with my back turned upon my settlement, I ate the remains of my cold breakfast, and smiled.

  — TEN —

  AFTER MAGDA’S VISIT, I was not troubled again for four nights. It was late—or early, I no longer knew—and you had been on your fifth feed, but had broken off only seconds in and, to my weary dismay, embarked upon your worst cry. This is the one that starts low, squeezes into logarithmic upward slope and falls quickly, then starts again roughly 0.32 seconds later. I have heard tropical bird calls that follow the same pitch arc, though without the same dreadful repetition.

  You squirmed in my grip, and I tightened it.

  Weeks of sleep deprivation had taken their toll, and my mental capacity was no longer at its optimum. This affliction carried symptoms. I spoke fragments of sentences out loud, found myself walking too quickly or slowly across the room to retrieve whatever object was required from the endless rotation of blankets, bowls and cloths which now formed my days. The journey of thought was not as smooth and swift as it usually was, and took tangents. Certain thoughts appeared unbidden, seemingly from uncharted territories of my mind.

  As you succumbed to the additional force I applied to stop you from wriggling from my arms, one such thought appeared—an extremely simple equation to calculate the exact pressure I would have to apply, and upon which of your vertebrae, in order to silence this, your most maddening cry.

  I sat in darkness on the edge of my bed, allowing this thought to remain as rivulets of rain connected and disconnected upon the window pane. It was then that I heard brisk footsteps squelching towards my house. I knew it was her before I heard the knocking.

  ‘Magda,’ I said when I opened the door.

  Magda’s face was fierce, white with sharp moonlight and streaming with rain.

  ‘Purpose or not, this has to stop,’ she said. ‘And if it does not then I shall send word to the council requesting that your project should be moved somewhere where it can cause no trouble. Fane must sleep, Ima. Fane must sleep.’

  With that she left me standing on the porch. I closed my eyes and breathed in the fresh, warm air, lost in the alternating temperature and velocity of rain upon my skin. I swayed as I stood. I believe I could have fallen asleep right there and then, in the manner of a horse.

  MY HORSE, IN fact, had been neglected. I considered this when I woke the next morning to find you still asleep and the day already light. After Magda’s rude intrusion, you had allowed me a deep five-hour slumber, the like of which I had not enjoyed for some time. Taking great care not to wake you, I got up and looked out upon the day. The heavy rain had dwindled to light drizzle, though I heard thunder in the east.

  I pulled on my boots. I would go outside, I thought to myself. See to my horse.

  He is not really my horse. He does not belong to me, at least, not in the same way your dead ancestors would have imagined. To them, so I had gleaned from the few texts I read, ownership was a strange and self-imposed right to something else—an object, area of land, animal, person or, most curious of all, idea. All such things were fictions, and yet from these fictions you drew your picture of reality. Houses, villages, cities, countries, continents, each partitioned with fences and invisible borders, each to be battled over time and time again.

  Strings of lies, just like those books.

  To an erta, ownership is far simpler. It is not something which is announced, upheld or contested, or passed on through generations. To own something means that you tend to and care for it. That is all. And, of all the horses that graze in Fane’s paddock, Boron is the one I tend to the most.

  I walked through cool skitters of rain to the paddock, west of the circle. The sun shone through black sea-bound cloud, hitting the rich green tree canopies on the hills above, and all was quiet but for the sound of my boots upon wet stone. I had missed my boots, I realised. I had missed walking in them outside.

  I saw Jakob near the far edge of the paddock, already seeing to
Boron. He looked up as I arrived, and waved. I walked over, through the mud.

  ‘Good morning, Ima,’ he said, with his usual grin, which I found I did not mind as much on this particular day.

  ‘Greetings, Jakob,’ I replied. I saw that he was inspecting Boron’s rear left hoof. ‘He has a thorn?’

  ‘No.’ He scraped a clod of earth from the cleft of the heel, causing Boron to whinny and yank his leg. Jakob released it. ‘Something’s troubling him, though. I think an infection has spread.’

  ‘I have some balm that Haralia gave me. I shall fetch it.’

  ‘I already applied some, with no effect,’ said Jakob, lightly patting Boron’s steaming flanks. ‘I have been tending to him these past weeks. When you have been inside. I have ridden him a few times as well. I hope you don’t mind.’

  I felt a bristle within, similar to that which Magda had so successfully induced.

  ‘I have been occupied,’ I said. ‘I would have spent more time in the paddock if I had…’

  Jakob renewed his smile.

  ‘It is all right, Ima. He is still your horse.’

  He stood back, allowing me to approach. The horse turned his great head, gleaming in the sun, and shook his mane at my smell. I placed a hand upon his nose and inhaled his scent.

  ‘Thank you for tending to him.’

  ‘It was no bother.’

  ‘Perhaps Haralia has some advice for his hoof.’ I turned to Jakob. ‘Is she visiting soon?’

  ‘A few days’ time, I think.’

  My lungs were still filled with horse-scented air. I breathed it out.

  ‘Good. That is good.’

  At that moment the sun burst fully from behind a cloud and spread fresh light across the wet hills. I looked up, tracking shadows of fast-moving cumulus across the forest.

  ‘It looks pleasant up here,’ I said.

  Jakob looked past me, back in the direction of the square.

  ‘Where is the, er—’

  ‘Human? In my house.’

  ‘I see. It is good that he can care for himself already.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘Thank you again for caring for Boron. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go home. Farewell.’

  ‘Indeed, I must also see to my own…’ I was already halfway across the field, my boots moving at twice the pace at which they had arrived. Jakob’s voice called from behind. ‘Farewell, Ima.’

  THE CIRCLE WAS still empty when I walked across it, though it was mid-morning. I heard low voices beyond the perimeter, and figures gathered near the lagoon. A broth harvest, I imagined, although my attention was fully upon my door.

  My muscles were tight, my pulse well above average, as another of my unbidden thoughts arrived; a clear image of you rolling from the bed and onto the floor. The thump of your flesh hitting timber. I quickened my pace, calculating the velocity of your impact, and which of your body parts were likely to be damaged. Your arms, neck, skull. With a surge of panic, I burst through the door and there you lay.

  Just as you had been. Still asleep.

  I had to sit down after that. Unbidden thoughts are one thing. Unbidden feelings are something else altogether.

  As I collected myself, you woke, calling gently for milk. I provided it, changed you, and stood with you in my arms, looking out at the blue sky above the mountains. Suddenly I felt compelled. I looked down and spoke.

  These were my first proper words to you.

  ‘You and I are going for a walk today.’

  — ELEVEN —

  I PACKED A satchel with blankets and a corked flask of milk, then fashioned a sling for you around my neck. You lay within this happily as we left the house and crossed the circle, which was still empty. I could still sense movement and voices from the lagoon, but I had no interest in joining the harvest. I wanted to walk and climb.

  This we did. My limbs stretched and pumped as they pulled us up into the forest. They had been largely inactive for forty days and nights, and the feeling of renewed activity in my muscles was most satisfying. I took the route that wound gently past Tokyo, Fane’s nearest neighbour, for two kilometres, then departed the track and strode up the steeper, tree-covered slopes. The air grew in warmth and density as we pushed further and further into the wood, and I allowed my mind what it craved, which was to process the sounds of the forest.

  Three distinct winds passed through the canopies, creating three distinct rushes of white noise with three distinct frequencies at their centres. I could picture these above me, and the individual shapes the passages of air made as they worked through branch after branch. The crunch of my boots betrayed the depth and water content of the bracken beneath it, and therefore the age of the pines. We passed beneath a tree in which a flock of fifty-three red-eyed starlings had gathered, making their endless downward chirps, talking of nothing. You gurgled. This was a sound you had not yet made, and I assimilated its frequencies, making a guess at its meaning. You confirmed it with a smile.

  It was your first.

  My mother’s blinks and sighs, Caige’s sneer, Benedikt’s narrowing eyes, Magda’s raised chin—unlike all these encrypted spasms your smile was simple to decode. Like the layers of sine waves that created the starlings’ twitters, or the primary colours that formed the spray of canopies through which they flew, or even the discrete quanta into which all of this could be broken, your smile was pure and simple. Indivisible.

  But perhaps one day it would not be so. Perhaps one day the mechanism behind it would grow so complex that you would rarely exhibit anything so primal. Every smile would be lost within a myriad of other inflections and ticks. You would raise your chin, narrow your eyes, sigh, blink, sneer. I might not always understand your equation.

  So I absorbed this rare event until your mouth had returned to its tiny, open pout. Then on I strode until the tree and its starlings were behind us.

  We soon reached the summit of the most southern hill, a wide crest that ran towards the cliff crags. Here I found a clearing surrounded by bluebells and a small apple orchard. Butterflies flew between the branches, and I sat down in the exact centre of the rough circle of trees. The air was fresher and cooler at this altitude, and no bird song disturbed us, so all was quiet but for the buzzing of busy insect wings.

  You had fallen asleep in a shaft of sunlight. I found a fallen apple, ate it seeds and all, and lay down to do the same.

  I WOKE TO a tremendous crack of thunder, the accompanying flash of lightning still visible as my eyes opened. I was drenched with rain from black cloud, pouring down through the opening in the canopies. Nothing buzzed, and the bluebells drooped with their sudden watery burden.

  I cried out and sat up. You were awake and bawling, just as sodden as me. My satchel lay in a pool of mud, soaked through. I gathered it and you up and ran from the clearing.

  I do not know how long the rain had been falling, having been in a deep sleep filled with heavy processing that prohibited all sensory intrusion. However, taking into account the light, cloud density, thickness of rain and the difference in the moisture content within the bracken, I estimated a little over twenty-four minutes. The ground was full of mud, and my boots sank deeper with every step.

  I ran as fast as I could, which is extremely fast, avoiding tree stumps and boulders and following the optimum route down the mountain as well as I could. But halfway down the land grew slippery, and after one enormous bound across a fresh stream of rain water, it gave way completely, so that I fell upon my back and slid with it. I cried out again. This behaviour alarmed me, for I knew there was nobody to hear. Such reflexes serve no purpose. But I had no time to reflect, because the mud slide was quickening, and though I scrabbled with the heels of my boots I could not halt my descent. I pulled you close to my breast and let gravity take me where it would.

  It was an extremely painful experience. Rocks, roots and branches pummelled my limbs and torso. No bones broke, and I knew the bruises would heal, but still—I had now endured more pain sin
ce your birth than I had in over a century.

  Before long, the narrow gulley in which we sped began to flatten and our speed reduced. We came to a stop by a thicket of young pines, beyond which I could see the outskirts of Fane.

  It was dark when I reached the square, though it could not have been past noon, and I found myself caked in mud, drenched and shivering, face to face with a crowd of my fellow villagers.

  They did not look at all pleased.

  RAIN HAMMERED THE slick and puddled stone upon which we stood, and the drains roared with the run-off

  ‘How goes the broth harvest?’ I enquired, the pitch of my voice squeezed by a single shudder from the cold and my recent exertion, which also made you gurgle in surprise. Saturation aside, you seemed remarkably unperturbed by our adventure, and I glanced at you chewing upon the air, hungry for a feed. My door was 7.23 metres away.

  Niklas stepped forward, holding aloft something long, brown and tattered. He himself was covered from head to foot in a thick goo, the stench of which was overwhelming.

  The field in which Niklas worked was waste processing. He oversaw Fane’s sanitation system, and the neat network of pipes that fed into the broth lagoon. I already suspected, with some dismay, what may have happened.

  ‘Do you recognise this?’ he said.

  I stared at the bedraggled rag, examining the weave barely visible beneath the layers of filth. I knew at once what it was.

  ‘That is a blanket.’

  ‘Your blanket,’ said Magda, from the crowd.

  The firmness with which Niklas kept his eyes upon me—as did the rest of the gathering—suggested that Magda was not alone in her feelings towards me.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ I said.

  Niklas shook the wretched thing.

  ‘Do you deny it?’

  I examined the weave once again, uselessly.

  ‘No. It is my blanket.’

  He released it and it slopped upon the stone, adding brown rivulets to the rainwater hurrying for the drains. He straightened his stoop and raised his chin. Pride, defiance, resolve—I was not sure.