by Huskyteer
“You let the tiger in and he created those things,” shouted the snake. “It’s because of you there are sharp plants here I can’t touch!”
“Serves you right for encroaching on his forest. How many trees were swallowed by your sand?”
“It was an accident! I apologized!”
“And then you made creatures that lived in those plants. Admit it. They gave you something new to do. Now they need water, so live with it.”
Abby realized she was afraid of them. Afraid of being seen. She never felt like this when she was a child. This place felt different now. She was vulnerable, exposed, and helpless. She had never really been aware of the myths she had read. She only knew that the tiger was responsible for the forest, the snake created the desert, and so forth. She paid no mind to the enormous power these Animals had over Canvas, how their whims meant life or death in her world, and to even look at them in the wrong way risked displeasing them.
Now she was aware of exactly who the Great Animals were. Her adult mind knew what they represented, and what they could do to her if they saw her. Disturbing their activities could bring famine, drought, quakes, or worse. It made more sense now than when she was young. This wasn’t a playground; she could have done great harm to her world.
She couldn’t stay here, and she didn’t want to risk walking around them. She didn’t feel hidden anymore, and if she were seen, her presence might displease one of these Animals, and who knew what the consequences would be. She closed her eyes and willed herself to appear in the forest. It wasn’t as easy as it had been years ago. It took special concentration and patience now, whereas before it happened as instant as a whim. The snake and the bird were still arguing and sparring, and after a few minutes of concentration she was under a canopy of trees.
The trees were beautiful. Perfect. Branches were straight and upright, nothing was broken, and the trees seemed to give off a light of their own. She heard two more voices and crept through the trees carefully. The underbrush was orderly and straight, and her feet made no sound when they stepped on a plant. When she raised her foot, the plant she stepped on came back upright exactly as it had been. Nothing broke or wilted here unless the Great Animals themselves broke it.
As she approached, the voices became clearer. She knew them. She’d spent hours watching and listening to these animals, and she could pick out any of them. She passed through a curtain of rain, and now it was raining through the trees. The rain was coming from a large shark suspended in the air between two trees by a violent uplift coming from the desert. A tiger thrice as tall as Abby was sitting on the clean forest floor, shouting up to it.
“Why not?” said the tiger.
“I can’t give you any more rain. There are other places that need it as much as you do. The cheetah needs it for the plains. She wants more game to hunt. The bear needs it for the mountains. Hunting is better when there’s snow.”
“I can make the trees bigger! And I have a new idea for creatures that thrive on the excess water!”
“If I do that, the trees will drown. You have plenty of water. Make do with what you have, tiger.”
The updraft suddenly shifted, and she shark was propelled above the canopy. Abby heard the heron’s distinct flapping overhead, pushing the shark along, taking the rain with her.
“Wait, don’t go! I want to show you what I have in mind!”
“Save it for next time, tiger,” said the heron from far overhead. “We have other places to be.”
The tiger growled, leaped to his feet and dashed deeper into the forest. “Wait! Wait!”
Abby watched him disappear through the trees, chasing the curtain of rain the shark took with her. Abby willed her clothes to dry, then she ran in the opposite direction. She was sure the lake was around here, but it had been so long since she’d been there she didn’t remember the way.
She passed a pack of wolves laughing and playing and hopping around between the trees. The wolves were as tall at the shoulder as she was. They seemed friendly now, but when they were hunting one of the small animals they created in the tiger’s forest, they were scary. When she was a little girl, she always avoided them unless they were between hunts, when they were laughing and rolling about like this.
She ran through still more trees. She never became tired in Canvas, but she was frustrated. She leaned against a trunk, looking at her feet, which in this distorted, dreamlike realm appeared far away.
This wasn’t working. She couldn’t remember how to get to the lake. She was sure it was in the forest, and she had found it many times, but that was years ago. Now she wished she hadn’t abandoned this place as a childhood plaything that needed to be discarded because she felt she needed to be an adult.
Wandering wouldn’t help her find who she was looking for. She thought about the other large animals here. The smaller ones were minor, a product of these large Animals’ whims. When she was a little girl she had watched the cheetah create a colony of prairie dogs. When she woke up, the things were everywhere, as if they had always been there. Indeed, scientists and researchers had produced records going back generations that stated they had always existed, but Abby remembered the animals and those records did not exist until the cheetah created them the day before.
She thought about where the jackal would be. Like the tiger, she only recognized the animal from books. They did not live in her village, or even her country. The jackal was one of the Great Animals that did not seem to have a home range. The snake had the desert, the cheetah had the plains, the tiger had the forest, the crocodile had the water, but the jackal wandered, just like the pack of wolves and the heron.
She remembered the mantis. The mantis had created the lake as part of the forest, but also separate from it. The mantis was tired of his creations falling prey to whatever forest creatures the tiger created, so he made his own refuge. Now she remembered the only way to find it was to will herself to be there.
Abby thought about the lake and willed herself to appear. It had been so easy years ago. Now it was an intense effort that required concentration and physical willpower. It was working, but it took more thought than she remembered. When she opened her eyes, she was behind a small cluster of trees surrounding an isolated body of fresh water.
Sure enough, there was the jackal. Somehow he had found the lake, and he was rolling on the ground laughing at the mantis. The jackal was as tall at the shoulders as she was.
“This isn’t funny!” shouted the mantis. She was three times taller than Abby, and her mouth never seemed to match her words. “Make it stop!”
“Don’t you like it?” said the jackal, lolling his tongue on the ground as he lay belly up. “It’s my newest creation! Look how fast they spread!”
“Jackal, you’re free to create as many of these things as you want, but I never gave you permission to use my insects!”
“Oh, cheetah will love them! He’s been making too many things for himself to hunt. The plains are crowded. I’m just trying to help keep things under control. Can’t reason with you people any other way. Even you’ve been a bit too productive lately. Can you imagine what would happen without me? This place would be overrun with creatures!”
The mantis lunged. The large dog rolled away and shouted from a distance. Abby’s consciousness extended to the lesser insects around her, the ones the mantis had created both in her image and variations thereof. They were full of something else. Something bad.
The mantis chased the dog around the lake, him laughing at her the whole while. Abby closed her eyes and conjured a weapon. Something that would work here. In her hands she felt a bow and arrow. It was perfect, as it would let her affect the outcome of this quarrel without drawing attention to herself.
She crouched between the trees, set the arrow and drew back. She waited for them to separate long enough to get a shot in. Their scuffle came close to her, the jackal scampered away, still laughing, and she let the arrow loose. It struck the jackal on the side. No blood came ou
t, but the canine was clearly startled. He fell, unable to move. The mantis rushed in, snatched the jackal up and screamed at him.
“Release my insects!”
The jackal hung from her scissor-like grip, kicking the empty air.
“Now!”
Abby was still low, watching through the underbrush. The bow and arrow had disappeared, and she remembered from her childhood that these animals may not bleed or sleep, but they do feel pain. It was probably the only thing keeping one of them from overrunning everyone else.
The other insects started behaving differently. Abby became aware that they had been freed of whatever the jackal had placed in them. The mantis sensed it, too, for she let him drop to the ground.
“Leave! If I find you here again, I will make you suffer!”
“Please… Please… There’s something…” He screamed and writhed in wordless agony.
The mantis just now noticed the arrow sticking out from his side. She leaned over it, grabbed it in her mandibles and pulled it out. The jackal was visibly relieved.
“What is this?” said the mantis, turning the arrow over in her forelimbs.
Abby closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up. She felt her clothes fading away, the air around the lake yielding to the smell of wheat and corn drifting in through the window.
She opened her eyes and raised her head. It was still dark outside, and she was covered in sweat. She threw off the cover, stood up and groped around the shelf for the switch on the radio. She flicked it, but there was no electricity. Gasping for breath and desperate for a drink of water, she threw on some dirty clothes and dashed out of the house.
The village streets were deserted. Most everyone who wasn’t already sick was indoors, hoping to avoid the plague. The houses were old, most of them were crooked, and the windows were shuttered. Nothing was over two stories high here, though she’d heard the buildings in the city could be as tall as five.
She turned a corner, skidding in the dirt and dashed down the next road. The horses in nearby stables grumbled at her passing. She hopped over a sleeping dog in the middle of the street. The airyard was just on the other side of the buildings here. Normally there would be balloons and zeppelins lined up in the field, ready for takeoff, but none dared land here now.
A little further up the street was her usual work. The town’s master seamstress was a prickly old woman named Mrs. Zin, but she had been alive for a long time, she knew everything, and Abby enjoyed being around her. She always learned something every time Mrs. Zin opened her mouth. For weeks the boiler in the back had been shut off, the steam valves empty, and the flywheels that ran the sewing machines idle. Life in the village had stopped to care for the sick.
Abby turned another corner and opened the gate to the school. She slowed to a fast walk, tried to compose herself, and walked through the main door.
The hospital had been overwhelmed last week, and all victims of the plague were treated in the school. There was little anyone could do but try to alleviate the symptoms and hope the patient recovered while the scientists a few buildings down worked on what this disease was and how to cure it.
Oil lamps and pillar candles lined the tables down the hallway. It was just enough light to see her way down the hall and into the lunchroom. A hundred people lay in sleeping mats on the floor. Several nurses were walking from patient to patient. At first Abby didn’t know what she was hoping to find here, but something was different. There were no sounds of moaning, no coughing, no choking, no rambling as the patient suffered hallucinations. A few of the patients were sitting up now. Abby walked to the closest one, a farmhand who had fallen ill three days ago.
“Are you all right?” Abby said.
He took a breath. It was clear, clean. “Yes… I think I am.”
Moments later, several nurses followed by three doctors and every scientist in the village ran inside the lunchroom and walked from patient to patient. Some of the ill were standing up, marveling at how easy it was now. The lead scientist ran from the lunchroom and down the hall. Abby knew exactly where he was going and ran after him. She turned a corner into the schoolmaster’s office, where the scientist was winding up a telephone on the wall.
“I need to reach the office of the power plant, please. Emergency.” A few seconds of silence. “Hello, this is doctor Hagim from the village of Nariss. We need electricity, now!” He was silent for a moment longer. “Our village was struck by the plague, and now the patients have recovered! I examined them myself just a few hours ago, and they were bleeding and coughing! Now it’s like they were never sick! I need electricity so I can run the x-ray machine and MRI!”
Abby leaned on the doorframe while he waited for an answer.
“What?!” said doctor Hagim, leaning closer to the mouthpiece. “Please, can you give us anything?… Fine, fine, shut us off an hour early tomorrow. Thanks!”
He hung up the earpiece on the hook and faced Abby. “What are you doing here?”
“What’s happening?”
“Patients all over the country are cured. The power plant is overwhelmed with requests. Nobody’s sure what’s happening. We might have an hour to take whatever readings we can.”
“That’s wonderful.”
Doctor Hagim nudged past her and speed-walked down the hall. Abby stared into space for a few minutes. It worked. What she thought she learned as a kid…it was all true. She came back to herself, turned around and ran back down the hall. As she did, the electric lights turned on, and she shielded her eyes from the sudden glare but did not stop running. Squinting, she turned the corner. The doctors and scientists had pulled a few volunteers from the group and were leading them out the front door now. The patients were walking upright, in full command of their body. Abby caught up to Doctor Hagim.
“Doctor, can I ask you something?”
“What is it, Abby? Make it fast.”
“What if I told you I tried something a few hours ago. Something drastic.”
Doctor Hagim met her eyes. Abby lost her nerve and turned her face down to her bare feet.
“Uh…have you ever given thought that maybe disease isn’t caused by microscopic animals? Maybe some of the new theories could be true? That the forces of nature are not controlled by anything in this universe, but happen somewhere else? That they’re controlled by people…somewhere else?”
“Deity Theory,” he said.
“Yes. Disease, the wind, the rains, that they’re all—”
“Deity Theory was created to describe the way a few isolated tribes survived without science centuries ago, not a current school of thought that needs to be tested. Did you try praying? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Abby lifted her head and met his eyes. “I did.”
“To whom?”
“Anyone I thought might help. And now…”
“Science cured your sleep disorder, Abby. Centuries of research went into that medicine.”
“Then what happened to the plague?”
“We’re going to find out. We’ll find the answer. We always do. If you want to help, come to the hospital, otherwise you may return to bed.”
“Thank you, doctor. I think I’ll go back to sleep. Doesn’t look like anyone needs me here now.”
“I hope not. I’ll sleep a lot better when we figure out what happened. Goodnight.”
Abby watched everyone leave the school and migrate to the hospital. The recovered patients were marveling at their newfound strength. Many were walking to the well to draw water from it. She was now alone in the schoolhouse. She listened to the sound of her breathing for a minute, then turned around and wandered down the hall. She absently extinguished the lamps and candles as she passed them. At the end of the hall she stopped at a door. The schoolhouse had five classrooms, more than enough for their village, and Abby was in front of her old grade school room now.
She turned the knob and walked inside, shutting the door behind her. The single electric light in the ceiling cast a
gloomy, yellow haze over the desks and chairs. A few open books were still on the desks, school having been cancelled in a hurry as the plague worsened. Class hadn’t been in session in weeks, and the air in here already smelled old and dusty.
Miss Weiss. Abby remembered her talking for hours at a time about prehistory, how people long ago discovered the telescope and then the microscope, the first scientific instruments. It was said they were invented before the wheel. People in that primitive society looked at various things, and one of the first discoveries was the cause of disease. Microscopic animals were everywhere, and civilizations all over began to devote their societies to escaping them.
The telescope led to other instruments that measured the weather patterns, and people began to time their crops to the cyclic seasons. Other people invented filters and studied the sun. Parallel experiments in chemistry revealed the inner workings of the world around them. The electron was harnessed centuries ago and has been used to further the advances of science ever since, though it was not as reliable as the steam engine.
But, Abby learned, there were a few civilizations in isolated places of the world that did not begin with science. They began with superstition, fear, and storytelling to explain disease, rain, and the changing seasons. Their creation myths and tales of Great Animals had been published as curious glimpses of the direction civilization could have gone, and Miss Weiss had gladly let Abby borrow that book. She devoured it as a child, practically memorizing it. She had seen the characters in person, and knowing nobody else had made Canvas feel that much more special.
She turned around in the room, meeting the eyes of every portrait on the wall. Great scientists throughout history; men and women who contributed something to the whole of civilization. They were hung chronologically around the room: the man who invented the telescope and microscope. The woman who identified the first disease. The man who recorded the first correct anatomy of a human being.
It had taken just thirteen hundred years to go from simple hunter-gatherers living in tribes to the modern steam age, and another fifty years to tame the electron. The societies who began with Deity Theory were still in the hunter-gatherer phase when modern society found them.
