Still, Eagan persists, and his father finally lets it go. There’s a small sliver of pride in his voice when he tells the boys down at the Legion Hall where his sixth boy plans on going.
Captain Sampson is true to his word. Soon, Eagan finds himself set up in the dormitories at the Flight Academy.
The school is exciting, the city is exciting, and the eclectic mix of people he meets is exciting too.
One month stretches into six months, and one year stretches into four years. Eagan graduates with good enough scores to become a genuine rocket pilot. It’s the best year of his life.
There is some sadness to his victory, though. Captain Sampson’s ailments finally catch up to him and he dies shortly after Eagan graduates. Still, the loss of the man who helped him realize his dreams only galvanizes his resolve to succeed.
He’s stationed on the moon at the Bravo moon base. There, he continues his training while waiting for deployment to further away outstations.
Space exploration and expansion is great for the human race, up to a point. They colonize asteroids and build orbital structures and mine for important metals and fuels and other key commodities. Things are easy for a very long time.
Things are what Captain Sampson might have called “swell”.
But like all things, man’s luck and good fortune comes to an end. At the dark corners of the universe, they start looking to cultivate the antimatter that flows into a temporal rift created at the end of the universe.
They find it out in the fringes, but they also discover something else. It’s sentient and hostile and so alien in nature, that they can’t classify it properly under their current scientific guidelines.
Men die along the outskirts of the rift. They die screaming into Eagan’s communication module. He can hear the fate that awaits him.
Sometimes their rockets return to base on autopilot with the men inside them destroyed from the mind outward, like microwaved eggs. These men have sensed whatever lurks in the rift. The impossibility of it, so far from human comprehension, has destroyed them.
The antimatter farming projects are put on hold and new initiatives are defined. Now, they are more interested in what it is that lives in the dark zones at the edge of the world.
Comparisons in the newspapers are made to the old New World explorations.
Everybody worries about sailing off the edge of the world.
To combat the madness-inducing effects of the rift, all pilots are required to sign up for mind-strengthening exercises. This involves pushing colored blocks of wood around on a piece of linoleum floor mat.
Eagan discovers it for himself one day while engaging in a solo exercise along the border of the rift.
Because there are new initiatives, he has been forced to learn new flight paths. Everything is routine until it isn’t anymore.
There’s a sudden burst of static over the communications module, and then Captain Sampson’s voice comes through loud and clear over the headset.
The voice tells him what he needs to do next.
It is nothing at all like flying a kite.
Soil From My Fingers
L. L. Hannett
I could convince falconers to trade six hawks for two of my hens. I could navigate borderlands without steering the caravan into Meito ghost fields. I could ford winter rivers, violent with fast-moving ice, without losing any of my stock. If duty called I could lead the Pasha’s warriors into battle, and guide most of them back out again. My clan was ten wagons strong; my brothers’ sons would add three more to that count before we set out on our next traveling days. Some believed I could make dead vines bear fruit or teach lame goats to walk, if only I wielded the right tools. Had the right ingredients. Spoke the right words. These things I could do and more. But it all meant nothing if no one remembered me, if I couldn’t give my wife a child.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. When we were first married, mystery and excitement drove me to Astrith’s wagon every night. I’d walk past the campfires above which spitted hares roasted, ignoring the rumble in my belly in favor of a lower hunger, earning smiles from my cousins and brothers. It was bad luck for husbands to live with their brides until after a first child was born; skittish young ghosts shy away from wombs when men are forever booming into them. I was determined to get Astrith with child, so we could start our life together. Properly. Without risking barrenness, or worse, being cursed with the unnatural offspring breaking this taboo would bring.
Astrith’s laugh gave me shivers, her touch was assured, her embrace was open and warm. I couldn’t wait to join her in bed each night, to renew our efforts at giving our House an heir. The clanwives would serenade me with a chorus of luck-giving whistles as I stepped out of the flickering light into evening’s deepening shadows; more often than not, my mother would give me a skin of fermented mare’s milk to bring as a gift. Thus armed, my hands and face and cock scrubbed clean, I would knock on the fresh green paint of my wife’s door, and wait for her to invite me in.
Deep yellow candle glow spilled down the wooden steps leading up to her caravan when she opened the door that first night. Astrith had been beautiful then. Her fair skin was made tawny in the ambient light, her black hair unplaited, her blouse unlaced and revealing. I nearly dropped the skin of milk when I saw her. Nearly tumbled back down the stairs and into the familiar sounds of falling night: cook pots clinking on heated stones, knives being honed by the fireside, axes splitting enough logs to keep darkness at bay, stories being told in murmurs. Closing the door, I’d turned to Astrith and blamed my clumsiness on the green-eyed cat winding itself around my ankles. I’d had a reputation among traders and warriors to uphold. Never let it be said that Tomaken is a stumbler.
Astrith had laughed at my excuses; a resonant, healthy sound. She’d bent down and shooed Sorokin, her favorite cat, away from my feet. While she was down there, she’d made quick work of my pants’ drawstring. Within moments, I was praying to the Meitoshi, thanking them for blessing me with such joy.
My knuckles were stained green from three years of nightly knockings. One thousand nights joining my wife, observed by her broods of kittens; one thousand days of tears marking Astrith’s wan features, and mine, as the cradle I’d built remained empty. She continued to welcome me, with arms and legs and heart; but after she’d twice expelled the bloody husk of a baby long before it was due in this world, Astrith’s enthusiasm for my affections grew thin.
“Keep trying”, my mother said, her breath visible in the late winter air. She took my hands, gave me a milk-skin kept warm by the fire. I placed it beneath my thick woolen vest; its heat did little to thaw the block of ice in my chest. “The moon is waxing, the stars are spinning. The time for growth and change is at hand.” When she patted my cheek, her hand was shaky. The whistle she sounded as I shuffled to Astrith’s wagon was more than a little forced.
My wife was sitting at the small fold-out table in the caravan’s far end, next to a potbellied stove that exuded more heat than was needed for such a small space. Her doeskin mantle was bundled in her lap, wrapped around something I couldn’t quite see. Not the baby, I prayed, when I noticed Astrith’s eyes were red from crying. Six months she had kept this one; I dreaded seeing the infant’s lifeless form, shrivelled in her lap. But there was no blood-stained nightdress, the woven floor-coverings hadn’t been rolled back to expose scrubbable boards, the tin chamber pot was still empty and tucked away in a corner. I held the door open, thinking Sorokin would want to escape the stifling heat — she had grown to be an outside cat, one who preferred being cold. When she didn’t appear, I closed the door and took a few halting steps toward my wife.
“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said, staring down at the mewling, writhing mass in her arms. “Beneath the mattress, in all the cupboards, behind curtains. In the footlocker, the undercarriage, in the crawlspace above the bed. I even pried
slats away from the walls” —I saw two wooden boards, leaning next to Astrith’s horse-head fiddle— “but I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
“Couldn’t find what, Breath of My Heart?”
Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her voice broke when she said, “The curse against mothers that plagues this house. There must be a hidden fetish, a poisoned charm in these walls. How will I carry this child to term when even poor Sorokin has been taken from me?”
My heartbeat quickened. I loosened Astrith’s grip on the cloak, pulled its covering folds away, revealed Sorokin’s still form. Six naked kittens squirmed at their mother’s cold teats, blinking blindly and struggling for supremacy. The two smallest ones looked like they wouldn’t endure the next five minutes; the four others weren’t faring much better.
“Only one need survive,” I said, plucking the strongest kitten from the litter, shifting the rest to the floor. I whispered life-giving words, pierced a small hole in the milk-skin with my teeth, then pressed the charmed liquid to the creature’s mouth. She snuffled and gulped greedily.
“We’ll defy this curse as a family. You and me, and Katla here.” Astrith smiled at the name. “The moon has changed for us three, My Breath. You’ll see.”
The baby seemed reluctant to join us. Our clan had journeyed throughout the traveling days: we’d crossed the heart of the grasslands; we’d scaled the steppes (avoiding the bandits that roamed those lands); and our path had reached the wooded foothills surrounding Zhureem Ordon, the Pasha’s mountain-top fortress, when my daughter declared she was ready to be born.
She was more than two weeks late; Astrith’s confinement was long and painful. The midwives earned their keep all day — their cheeks grew ruddy, their summer tunics stained with sweat, as they ran to and from the river carrying canteens of water for boiling or for rinsing blood-soaked rags. They wouldn’t cut the child from her mother’s womb, no matter how badly it pained them to see Astrith struggle: to remove a creature thus would deem it unborn. The ancestors would keep its spirit, leaving only the shell of an infant behind. It would be better for mother and child to die than to bring such an abomination into the world. Our clan prided itself on its band of heirs; we had yet to lose any of our offspring to the ghost fields. With the Meitoshi behind me, we wouldn’t start with my child.
I remained at our camp while my men went hunting in the forest. They nodded their approval when I volunteered to tend the horses, beasts renowned for their wiliness, before they disappeared into the trees. For hours I dug post-holes for the animals’ temporary pens in the clearing opposite our wagons and tents. I could hear Astrith’s cries even there. They’d started off strong, but had grown weaker and weaker until my spade, ringing against rocky soil, drowned them out.
The sun had passed her torch to night’s guardian before Chinta, the eldest midwife, came to collect me. She placed her wizened hand on my shoulder, not flinching at the filth and sweat she found there, and whispered, “It’s time for you to come.”
Her expression was unreadable. I dropped the spade, grabbed my sheepskin jerkin, and followed Chinta to Astrith’s caravan. The camp was quiet. The men were only now starting to return from their hunt; the women hovered in hushed circles near my wife’s dwelling, waiting for news of the birth. The crunch of my boots on brittle grass echoed in my ears, the beads dangling from my long black braid clicked together with each step I took. Chinta left me at the stairs, her head bowed. I’m sure I heard voices rise in speculation as soon as the door snicked shut behind me.
Astrith sat up in bed, nestled beneath a mound of quilts and furs. Wet tendrils of hair clung to her cheeks, which were the grayish white of old teeth and dewy from her labor. Her head was propped up against stained pillows; her eyes were open but moved sleepily as I approached. Two large bowls filled with crimson water had been abandoned at the foot of her bed. In her arms a bundle, not unlike the one she’d held three months earlier.
“We’ve a beautiful girl,” my wife said. A smile wavered at the edges of her lips.
“A girl,” I breathed. I perched on the edge of the mattress, trying to disturb my girls as little as possible. “A daughter.” Astrith’s nod was barely perceptible. “May I?” I asked, then scooped the bundle into my arms before my wife had a chance to respond.
The baby was much smaller than I’d expected. Her skin was also bluer than seemed normal. She was so tightly swaddled all that was visible was her head, which was topped with a shock of black fuzz. Full lips, tiny nose, two delicate ears, two puffy eyes. Each feature appeared in its proper place. Her eyes were closed for the most part, but she’d peeked at me long enough to show off the deep brown of her irises. Flecked with gold, just like my mother’s. “She’s stunning,” I whispered.
Katla wound through my legs, just like Sorokin used to, and meowed to get my attention. “Look, Katla,” I said, crouching down to the cat. “A perfect little sister for you.” But I felt uneasy as I said it. The cat recoiled at the sight of my daughter; she swatted at the baby with claws extended. The girl didn’t react in the slightest. Her breathing shallowed.
“Something’s wrong,” I said to Astrith. “This infant is too cold.”
Tears spilled over my wife’s pale cheeks, but she remained silent.
“We must get the midwives, get them back here to fix her—”
Astrith shook her head. “They know she’s not right, Tomaken. Why else would they have summoned you? You know a husband doesn’t see his child until it’s been named.”
I’d forgotten, in my excitement.
“You are here to say goodbye, nothing more,” she said.
“No,” I replied. “No,” as the baby grew still. “Nothing’s wrong with her, Breath of My Heart. All she needs is to get some fresh air.” I chuckled, tried to keep my voice even as I scoured the room for ingredients. “I’ve told you not to keep your stove so warm,” —there’s blood, grabbing a handful of soaked rags from the bowls— “and in the middle of summer no less,” —there’s hair, snatching a few inky strands from my wife’s bone-handled brush— “but I’m sure you’ll learn these things,” —there’s dirt aplenty outside— “when you’ve had more time as a mother.”
All I need now, I thought, is an appropriate vessel…
The cat yowled as I stepped on her tail. I smiled, shook my head at her. “Come here, my Katla. We’re going for a little walk.”
All eyes were averted as I exited the caravan. Yet even a blind man would have seen the burden I carried, would have noticed the speed with which I left the enclosure of our camp. Not many would have paid attention to the cat-shaped flicker of darkness at my heels, or would have thought it unusual if they had. No one stopped me as I blended in with the shadows; it was only fitting I bury the child before its spirit grew too accustomed to the warmth of our homes, the taste of our breath.
And I had every intention of putting my girl in the earth, but none of leaving her there.
First, I took her to the river where the waters thrummed like ancestral voices. I immersed my daughter, ridding all traces of her human birth. Then I gathered my supplies in one arm, the baby and Katla in the other. The cat fought against me until I pinned her to my side, trapped her small head in my large hand; she wailed like a newborn, which I took as a good sign. I hoped the fight would stay in her until it was needed most.
I returned to the site of my afternoon’s toils. Without hesitation, I dropped the baby and accompanying magics into the freshly turned earth, which was rich brown and smelled of horse dung. I lifted the cat up, looked her straight in the eyes: they were as vibrant an emerald as her dam’s had been. “Thank you, my Katla,” I said — and with a silent prayer for the Meito to send a strong spirit, I snapped the cat’s neck and buried her in the same pit as my daughter.
I could have left it there, and almost did. One final element was needed, to quicken the spell, but I didn�
�t think I had the will to provide it. If it took this long to work the proper way, I thought, there’s no chance it’s going to work now. My mind made up, I turned toward the river, ready to cleanse myself of the night’s events. To wash everything away.
I’d gone no more than three steps when a picture of Astrith, exhausted and probably barren, flitted across my mind. It was for her I was doing this. For her, and my heir. I walked back to the mound of tamped dirt, used the spade handle to drill a deep hole in its center. Bile rose in the back of my throat. I took a deep breath, let the chill breeze soothe me. Exhaling, I reminded myself that Tomaken is no stumbler. I knelt, not to bury my girl but to bring her back.
Almost a fortnight had passed since I’d had a night visit with my wife; it wasn’t long before my stroking hand coaxed warm spurts of semen onto the earth. There was no pleasure in this act, only need. When my racing pulse slowed, I pulled up my trousers, watched my seed seep into the ground, then cried until my head pounded.
Astrith didn’t question where I’d found our green-eyed daughter. She didn’t mention the filth I’d carried into the room on my boots, merely brushed crumbs of dirt off our wriggling infant as I placed her on the bed. We’d been married long enough now for her to know my secrets. To know what I was capable of doing. I slipped into bed beside her in the gray twilight that masquerades as daybreak, and tucked the girl snugly between us.
“We’ll have to give her a name,” Astrith said. It was clear from my wife’s expression that she was already besotted. “Before we can introduce her to the rest of the clan.”
“Her name is Katla,” I said. “You’ll find she won’t answer to anything else.”
Astrith looked at me for a moment too long, but didn’t say anything. My strong wife, always proving I was lucky to love her. I kissed her full on the lips then, as I hadn’t done in weeks. She responded in kind, though we were both so exhausted our mouths soon parted. I ran my finger along her smooth brow, traced the line of her high cheekbones, then cradled her square jaw in my palm. “Get some rest,” I said. Her contented smile was a welcome pressure against my hand. “We’ll give our Katla the introduction she deserves when the rooster has properly greeted morning.”
Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories Page 4
