Notes from the Burning Age

by Claire North

  Time to give up, perhaps.

  Time to stop running.

  So long as the forest takes me, not the dogs, I will be content.

  I think I have fallen.

  I think I have slept, leaning against the side of a tree.

  I think I have woken and moved and slept again without realising, sleepwalking through the dark.

  I have no idea where north is, or south. I only find the river by its sound, sit on its bank, imagine losing the dogs by wading through its rushing depths, know that if I do, and cannot light a fire on the other side, I will die. I think that if I try to cross in this inky state, Vae’s fingers will rise from the pebble bed below, and she will hold hands with me and pull me down into the water’s depths. I do not think she is lonely or sad in whatever drowned place the forest took her; I think the kakuy of the river and the sea carried her water to crystal islands and beneath the frozen surface of the north and that there is nothing malicious in their motion, no rancour in their embrace. I do not attempt to cross the river, but follow its bank in a direction – I do not know which one, fumbling against rocks and slipping, wet-toed, round fallen buttress trees. I hear a drone overhead and know I imagined it. Then I look up, and it is real, or at least a very convincing hallucination. It hovers directly above me, some hundred metres up, a single red light on its tail as it turns its lensed eye to examine me. I raise one hand in greeting, as an estranged lover might when meeting an old affair after an awkward ending and a forced reunion. The drone neither bobs nor flashes in reply but turns and heads back up the river bank, as if it had not seen me at all.

  Pre-dawn lasted a year, a band of grey in the east, which I had not realised was east. I knelt on the top of the great round stones that traversed the river at its shallowest point, put my head in my hands and knew I could go no further. I curled up in the middle of the stream on a great grey rock with a green underwater beard and waited for the sun to kill me. When it finally rose, peeking over the mountain tops, it was an avalanche of light rolling down the valley, a visible tumble of silver. I curled away as it struck me, buried my head in my hands, waited for it all to be over, the shivering uncontrollable now. I heard the creatures of the forest flutter snowflakes from their wings, beat the night from their tails, chirrup the darkness from their lungs and raise their eyes to heaven, and I cowered from it all and wondered what was taking the dogs so long to catch me and drag me by my ankles to their masters.

  Then, a footfall, strange, heavy, pressing into the snow.

  And another.

  They came, far enough apart to imply some mighty, ponderous thing. A bear maybe, testing its weight on the unfamiliar edge of the river. Each crunch was long and slow, perhaps carrying the echo of a falling tree or the slow splintering of breaking ice. I did not open my eyes, and then I did, the last dredges of curiosity overwhelming my cold-broken fatigue.

  The kakuy of the winter wood did not regard me as he went about his business. He did not raise his icy head nor pause in his snuffling at river’s edge. Instead, he dipped a black nose the size of my face into the water, pulled back a little as if shocked by how cold it ran, then dipped down again to lap at the fresh-flowing stream with a tongue the deep purple of clotting blood. Four paws, each bigger than my back and each with seven claws, dug into the snow, yet the tracks he left behind seemed only a few millimetres deep, as if he made no mark upon the land over which he plodded. His fur had turned moonlight white and was crowned with spikes of ice, in which fractal spirals and broken patterns of half-imagined forms were captured, twisting this way and that with the changing light. A single, cheeky robin sat a few inches from his tail, preening itself, enjoying the free ride, the power and majesty of the kakuy somewhat altered by its secondary role as birdstand. A smell of black soil and foggy dew rolled off him, powerful enough for even me to smell through the still morning air, and when he raised his eyes to examine his domain, they were winter’s night, full of stars. I lay still as the rock beneath me, watching him through my bundled arms. He paid me no attention, lapped up a little more water, shook himself, startling the robin into indignantly flapping away, a creaking and cracking of ice over shaggy, flabby flesh, and then at last looked at me.

  The kakuy of the winter wood gazed upon me as the fatted lion, blood on his lips, might regard the little scavenging carrion birds that come to feast upon the corpse the pride have killed. Too insignificant to hunt – a curiosity, a courtier, even – a tiny, ignorant thing. I thought I should bow my head in prayer, put my hands together, the fingers locked in frozen curls, show some deference. But neither the kakuy nor the lion have any interest in the deeds of little things, save as some idle curiosity to watch with full belly, and so the kakuy looked at me, made no sign of distress or disturbance, and looked away, turning slowly from the river to shamble up the slope towards the rising sun. Within a few yards, the thick trunks of the bending silver forest had consumed him, the thump of his great weight no longer echoing through the earth, as if he had been swallowed whole by it. I gazed along the path he’d taken and could barely see the tracks he’d left behind, save for the thick branch of the silver birch that had bent out of his way as he passed. I let my eye wander a little further, past the frustrated, circling red-breasted robin, and saw the stone lantern that had been there all this time, tucked into the shadow of the trees. It was old, unlit, the snow inches thick on its sloping roof, piled high around its grey base. It marked the beginning of a narrow path – too narrow for the kakuy, yet somehow he had travelled it. I watched it for a while, wondering if it too would vanish as the kakuy had, but it resolutely did not.

  I uncurled one leg, and it was the tearing apart of an ancient metal rod rusted into some deformed shape.

  I uncoiled the other and whimpered and swore and cursed at the pain that ran through me, and cursing vilely made it a little bit easier, so I kept on uttering profanities until my body was practically upright, on the verge of tipping constantly forward but swaying now one step at a time towards the path.

  I reached the stone lantern, clung to it as if it were some sacred, holy sign, paused in my cursing long enough to give thanks, thanks to the forest, thanks to the river, thanks to the stone and thanks to the sky, thanks to my kindred who had made this path, thanks to the living who brought light out of the darkness and the dead who had given offering to the timber that housed them and the forest that kept them whole. I half-sang a half-forgotten prayer, a mantra to the changing sun and changing moon, snatches of words from old texts that I had not uttered in all the time I had been Kadri Tarrad, Georg’s man, all the time he had been burrowing in my head to see the truth of my heart, and knew now that if I died at least I died free of him, at least Georg would no longer be in my soul. I pushed onwards, up the path, following the dotted lanterns until my toes, sinking through snow, hit buried steps rather than merely winding dirt. I bit back a sob and crawled on hands and knees, too breathless now to manage more than the odd meaningless word gasped through broken lips. The sun made the brightness of the snow unbearable, a dazzling mirror that pierced my fluttering eyes; the forest broke it up into pools of white and shadow, a shelter, a softness, the leaves and rising mist turning the world into a woven tapestry of illumination, the day a solid thing, reach out and grasp it in your fingers, turn it this way and that, this moment alive, still alive, still alive!

  The shrine gates stood open at the top of the path. No one had come here to destroy, no one had bothered to seek out this little sanctuary to the kakuy of the winter wood. Neither had any Medj lit lantern or incense for many a month, but the timber door slid back to the little room that would have been their sanctuary, and there were blankets piled above the folded mattress in a corner, and dried fruit and vegetables in the cold-storage box behind the altar, and though the solar panels were impossibly matted over with snow, the single small battery off to the west activated when I turned the breaker, and in the tiny square hollow of the Medj’s cell, the heater began to glow to life. I piled mysel
f with blankets, pressed my head into the woven matted floor, crawled so close to the heater I thought the fabrics that shrouded me might burn, and closed my eyes and shook before the rising dawn.

  Chapter 25

  Having stopped, I could not start again.

  I lay on the floor of the cell, not even bothering to unfold the thin lilac mattress tucked into a corner, and waited to be caught. Sometimes I managed to crawl far enough to open the storage box and munch on a little apple or fermented cabbage. Then my jaw hurt, so I curled back up again by the heater, until finally, nearly six hours later, the battery that had not been charged for so long gave up. Then I lay on the floor a little longer and waited to be arrested. No one came. The dogs did not howl, the guardia did not break down my door, Georg was not in my head. It occurred to me that this was the kind of posting I could really do with, right now – a forest shrine to tend alone, far from the madness of mankind and their brewing wars and vanities. I pictured myself before the shrine to the kakuy, giving thanks to the forest and, with honour and reverence, sweeping the path and lighting the lanterns, bowing down to the river that gave me life and offering my morning songs to the sun that warmed me. It would be a good calling, I concluded, to be alone in this place, a representative of humanity sent to give thanks. Then I thought about it a little more, decided I’d probably be mad within a week and wondered if there was a school nearby that ever sent children to this shrine, to be taught the old temple lore of ecology and the nitrogen cycle, which mushrooms to pick and which to avoid, and how to live in balance with the world that sustained them. I hoped so; I hoped so with a fervency that astonished me, as if in these few hours of huddling from the snow I had already become keeper of this sacred place.

  Then I remembered who I was and waited for the dogs, and the dogs did not come.

  An hour or so before sunset, I dragged myself, every part locked in swollen pain, head pounding as if respite had finally allowed the adrenaline that had sustained me to yield to the true exhaustion of the day, into the tiny courtyard of the shrine. I could stretch my arms out in the middle of it and brush either the altar, the gate, or the twin walls of the Medj’s cell and washroom, all with a little drunken swaying. I blew a fine crust of snow off the altar, dusted it with the corner of my sleeve, pressed my palms together and bowed to the stone carved face of the kakuy, wished I had a snowdrop or some thin winter flower to lay in offering before his image.

  Then I heard the drone again and looked up, irritated now to be disturbed in this place by something so human. I could not see it through the overhanging trees, but I had no doubt that it could see me and raised my fingers in a distinctly profane gesture to it, as much exasperated as anything else that its pilot was taking so long to find me. It turned and buzzed away.

  In the washroom, I found dusty robes of the Medj, greys and faded blues. Technically, they were not the robes of the inquisition, and numerous exams and years of careful study and contemplation were required before I was allowed to wear them, but they were warm and clean, and after a little consideration I concluded that my service in Vien probably counted for at least half a doctoral thesis, strong on fieldwork. I untangled myself from my own filthy clothes, peeling them away one bloody layer at a time, and tried not to look too closely at the tapestry of black and blue that rippled over my body before winding myself back into the priest’s gown. I found a broom in the dusty corner of a room and knocked the snow off the solar panels. A bucket of wooden pellets lay behind the toilet, ready to start a small fire if needed. I thought about saving them, hoarding my goods, then concluded it was ridiculous and, dragging the bucket into the tiny courtyard, dug a shallow bowl, lined it with stones that some scholarly Medj had doubtless arranged in an ornamental manner of deep metaphorical import and set a small fire going. It was not as magical as the warmth of the heater had been, but it would serve. As the sun set, I piled more stones around the blaze, taking the hottest of the bunch to wrap into my robes and press against my skin as the darkness returned to the forest.

  The drone came once more, a few minutes after sunset, but it didn’t stay long enough for me to bow, wave or mime obscenities at it. I bent over the fire, prayers tumbling from my lips, the old forgotten songs of gratitude and harmony, sung loosely and out of tune. I thought of taking a stick from my blaze and lighting the stone lanterns that led up the frosty path to my door, as the guardians of this shrine must have done for so many years. But that would have involved leaving the heat of the fire, the orange light reflected upon the image of the kakuy, so I stayed where I was as the owl called and the cold silenced even the hungriest of creatures in a frozen malaise.

  I was half-asleep when I heard the footsteps, crunching on old snow. I didn’t turn as they approached, but unravelled a lukewarm stone from my gown and returned it to the guttering edge of the fire, listened to the creaking of the gate, heard another step on snow, heard it stop. It struck me as odd that there was not more noise; had the guardia I had fought in the windfarm come alone? Somewhere I had her stick, unless I had lost it in the forest. Maybe this time she’d brought a gun.

  Silence, save for the crackling of fading flame.

  I half-turned, twisting, and the twist was agony, so I half-shuffled instead, scootching my backside round in a less-than-dignified bumping to see who had come to arrest me. For a moment, I imagined I would not see a human at all but the kakuy of the winter wood, come again to see what honours were paid to him in the shrine that should have carried the smell of incense in thanks for the gifts of his domain. Instead, there was a woman, alone, dressed in a thick midnight-blue coat and hood, fur-lined gloves and knee-high boots, carrying a heavy rucksack on her back, a flashlight in her hand, a gun on her hip. In the low light of the fire, I could not clearly see her face, but there was nothing in her body that spoke of violence or aggression, of retribution for my flight. She could have been a midnight pilgrim, come to pray, except that she turned the full force of the light into my face, her other hand by her weapon, and said:

  “Ven?”

  I looked again, realised I had only spoken to the forest all day, and that my voice, when I spoke to people, seemed entirely alien and strange. “Yue?”

  When things are unnatural, unreasonable, any reasonable response is impossible. I did not run to her; she did not drop her bag and embrace me. Such things happen in cities, in stations, in places that are in the domain of men. In the forest, we stared at each other in silence. Snow tumbled from the black branches, the birds sang, the trees grew, the river roared and took Vae away with it, and we looked at each other longer than the years we had been apart.

  Then that too passed, that too was ending, and she shuddered as if the water of the river that had flowed across her back was still rushing through her blood. She lowered her torch, switched it off, walked forward, knelt down beside me, warmed her hands by the last of the fire, pressed them to the top edge of a hot, black-stained stone. The strap that secured her gun was loose, weapon ready to be drawn. She looked into the flames as if she might see the spirit of the great burning slumbering within them, then at last raised her gaze, her puffed breath mingling with mine. For the first time, she seemed to see the bruising mottled across my skin, and reached up, examining my face, touched the back of my head where the guardia’s stick had landed, looked back into the fire, opened her bag, pulled out an insulated flask that steamed when she opened it, took a long drink, exhaled, then handed the flask to me.

  I drank. It was a kind of tea, floral but weak. She dug deeper into her bag, pulled out a neatly packaged medical kit, said: “You’re injured.”

  “Yue – you are Yue.” The words wanted to be a question, but there was no questioning in it.

  “Ven – you’re injured.”

  “No. Yes. I mean… yes. But I’m fine. Not fine. Fine. How are you here?”

  “The drone,” she replied, turning her chin briefly upwards and taking the flask back from me as if concerned I might drink enough heat to drown.


  “That was you?”

  A nod, uh-huh. She is fumbling with the pack, little vials of military-grade compounds, far more impressive than anything I’ve used or seen.

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  She took a while to answer, contemplating where in the cascade of possibilities the most truthful response might lie, picking the most concise way to express as much complexity as she could. “Nadira is dead.”

  The mind has two choices: understand these words, or reject them utterly. I tell her that she is wrong, she has misunderstood. Of course Nadira isn’t dead. She has looked under the wrong rock, come to the wrong shrine. Once the water that feeds me was in the ocean, as was the water in Nadira’s blood; we shared the seas, you see, so I’d know if she was dead, and anyway, the whole thing is absurd, quite, quite absurd. Nadira is fine. Georg lied, he lies, he never found a way into her mind. Georg is not made of water; only gasoline runs through his veins. We are different, you see; we are all one life, but we are different.

  These words may have become a babble; there may perhaps have been something a little hysterical in my eye, because Yue catches my hands in hers. The touch, glove on glove, silences me. She waits for the words to settle inside my throat, watches for understanding in my face, sees it bloom, nods once, carries on with her work.

  “I have a team three kilometres from here.”

  “Nadira is Temple,” mumbles some mushed-up voice that is going to be my own, now and for ever, now that Nadira is dead. “You are Council. Why are you here?”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “It’s not far. Lean on me.”

  When I last saw her, walking through the halls of power behind Jia, she had seemed tall, filling the world with her presence. Now she is a little too short to comfortably drape over, our weights shifting side to side with the effort of balance as we sway down the frozen path by torchlight. Sometimes I think I can walk without her, and make it a few hundred metres so fast I think I could fly. Then I have to stop, and like an old man at the top of a high mountain bend over double to catch my breath. It would be ridiculous to laugh or cry, to tell her she’s not real, to swear blind my life up to this moment was an illusion, that time stopped when the forest burned and the kakuy died by the roaring river. At one point, I open my mouth to explain all of this, and get as far as “Yue,” before falling silent again. She gives me a quizzical look, and sees that there’s nothing but madness in me, and nods once, and says not a word.