by Capps, Chris
I leaned back, letting my head hover an inch from the cot, suspended by the net hanging above me. And so that's what I looked into - that spiderweb pattern leading up to a single black nail in the ceiling. I waited. The gun, which no one had attempted to relieve me of, still nestled in its holster. My palm occasionally touched it to remind me it was still there. It was small comfort to an odd sort of delirium.
The next thing that happened, other than the occasional pair of voices running past the open front door, was some time later, close to sunset. Freezy came in through the front of the hut with a piece of cloth wrapped around some bread and a couple long strips of meat.
I ate them both without a second thought, downing it with what Freezy called, "Cornstill and water." Essentially alcohol poured in well water to kill off the less ambitious parasites. Cornstill wasn't what everyone in town called corn alcohol, but I gathered that the Breezys weren't from around here originally.
After I had finished, Freezy asked me why I had been riding toward the hills.
"Those hills," she said, "You know they're outside the purview of reason, right?"
"A thing landed there," I said, "Something I need to confirm is safe before I can go home."
"I'll save you a trip," she said taking the cloth and sternly pouring the last breadcrumbs into her pocket, "It's not."
"Why?" I asked.
"Used to live there," she said, "Not too many years ago it was a nice place. Flat plains and green grass as far as your eyes could go. Now if I tell you this land south of the hills gets rain, I bet you wouldn't believe me." I shrugged, not sure if she was trying to tell a joke. She continued, "It does. Once every now and again we get an eastbound cloud that finds fit to spit on us. Helps the crops a little, but there's something even more important than that. It hardens the earth. Cracks it up, keeps it thirsty and solid. Up north we stopped getting that rain."
"Dust storms," I said nodding, "I've seen them."
"Not just one dust storm, though," Freezy said in melancholic tones, "The whole land is haunted by spinning monsters fit to drink the ocean. Can't breathe, can't sleep. Before it got to its worst, last Spring Pa and me went south to sell a few buckets of grain. When we came back our home town was gone. Nothing there but a great big fluffy hill. No footprints. It must have happened during the night. Only my sisters and Pa survived on account of us heading south. Lots of places went like that. So we headed back down and this is where we live now."
"Spinning monsters," I said, "Cyclones?"
"Cyclones with a mind of their own, wandering the land and fighting amongst themselves for supremacy of their domain, eating one another and getting bigger. Stronger. Down here we're scared of ripper dogs, but you never hear folks talking about what those dogs are scared of. It's the damn sky growing arms and snatching you up. And it's that hungry dust wind that'll eat the skin right off your body."
"Freezy," I said hoisting my leg over the side of the cot, "Have you seen the walking cities? I come from one of them. I'm out here to pick up something that landed in those hills. It might help a lot of people."
She considered me, an enlightened smile twisting her face slowly as realizations compounded one another in her mind,
"I had a feeling it was something like that. You're obviously not from around here."
"I kind of had a feeling you weren't either," I said running my fingers down the rebar lashed to my leg, "This is going to hold well. I'm going to need a way to get moving again."
"I don't think so," Freezy said in surprise. She idly reached down and rapped a knuckle against the bandage sending a sharp pain to grab my spine. Against my wishes I made a sound, a terrified sound. She said, "You're staying here for a while. A broken leg takes around three to four months before you can start thinking about walking on it again."
"Then I'll need an alternative to walking," I said, "I don't have a lot of time."
"What's more you're liable to bleed out if those bandages get upset. And in that dust out there, I promise you will get an infection if you expose it to air. That's another thing about the North Dust. It gets in everything. You sit back and I'll be in to check on you later."
I leaned back, considering my options carefully. With my leg broken, even I knew there was no way to ride North now. But there had to be a way. They had killed my horse for meat, so I didn't suppose there were other horses lying around. What's more, even riding with a broken leg was a whole new skill I didn't have. I laid there looking at the ceiling for the rest of the evening, and that night I slept.
I don't remember what I dreamed.
The next morning Freezy came back in alongside Jester and the old woman Anna. I sat at a small wooden table drinking cornstill water and eating a full pound of horse meat. Jester brought up a bag with several painted round stones and asked me if I knew how to play a game he called Metago. The majority of that day I spent sitting with him leaning heavily on the wall while we played, placing pebbles in formations on the dusty wood table. My mind drifted often, to the land up north, and to Tyche.
"You're not awful at this," Jester said finally after clearing the board once again, "You just aren't thinking straight. What's eating you, boy?" I shook my head, pointing with a weak finger down at the table for Jester to deal out another formation. With shaky hands I took my share of the pieces and placed the first one, saying,
"Damn leg."
The next three days went like that. Jester did his best during the day to keep me occupied, telling me stories of the great dust storms he still sometimes saw from town up in the distance.
"Tornadoes three hundred feet tall, and so wide that a man would get tired walking from one end to the other."
At night Freezy would ask me questions about the spider city I came from and the people there. I told her about the large statues, the health and sanitation, the clothes, the socialite parties. I never talked about the people in depth, or the fact that nearly everyone was owned by somebody. Trying to explain it to a girl whose father didn't seem to accept the concept of a riding horse didn't seem like it would end well.
"Mostly we spend our days much like you do," I said, "Trying to survive and get along as best we can."
That was the only outright lie.
The next morning after that, Jester and I sat at the table playing Metago. Concern was drawn in a long formation across his face, his eyes passing uneasily between me and the pieces on the table. Finally I asked,
"What's wrong?"
"We're leaving," he said, "We've run out of money from the horse run and meat to sell. We'd better head back out there in search of the next thing. It's been a week, though, and the hole in your leg is mostly healed I'm sure. The bone will mend itself in a few months."
"You're leaving me behind?"
"We're heading a bit further south," he said, "There's got to be something else out there for us."
After a couple of games he stood up, his hands idly picking up the pieces and placing them back in his bag. He had a guilt ridden expression on his face, one which I hadn't seen before. I knew there was no convincing him to stay. He had fulfilled what he could justify as a contract in his mind, and now it was time for him to care for his family.
"I'm sorry about your wife," I said finally as he spilled the rocks into his bag. He nodded, setting the bag on the table and taking his satchel over his shoulder,
"Thanks. You take care of yourself. There's work around town that'll not require use of a leg. I talked to the town smith. He says you can work with him sitting down and casting bullets. I worked something out between him and Anna so you can stay here until you're right. You had provisions. Those I'm leaving with you to use or sell."
"Jester," I said, plainly, leveling my eyes at him, "You've ruined my life."
"I saved your life, boy. Saved all our lives for a few days."
And he left.
With Jester gone I found myself in the windy hut alone, sitting and staring down at the Metago bag.
Metago is much
like a game I used to play back on the city. You try to build living formations with light and dark stones, only each player is allotted a random number of "Metagos" which can collapse a formation and eliminate it from play. The addition of Metagos changes gameplay dramatically. Any single formation can be cut out and replaced.
I stood uneasily, cursing at myself as I lumbered back to the cot and rested my head in the thread net, staring out from it into the room and thinking about Tyche and the city. Three months. Tyche didn't have that much time. She might have two months. Maybe. I had wasted too much already, sitting and trying my best to heal. I willed my body to speed up, to mend its bones more quickly. I had been doing just that for three days.
Was this feeling what I had dreamed Atus knew? This sensation of feeling trapped inside yourself? No. That still wasn't it.
Freezy walked in carrying a strip of dried meat wrapped in her apron. She knocked at the side of the door, her hand timid and uncertain. I was surprised to see her, sitting back up,
"You're still here?"
"We done you wrong," she said, "I'm staying behind until your leg heals. They'll be back in a few months anyway." And she handed me the strip of dried meat. By now it was getting gamier with each passing day, but still perfectly edible. I ate it hungrily, feeling the pit in my stomach fill. With that I stood on my good leg and wrapped an arm around her,
"Then help me get to work. It's time I earned my keep."
The blacksmith, a young man by the name of Cyril, looked up from the thick steam and smoke of his shop when we entered. His blotched balding scalp was gleaming with thick rivulets of sweat in the sweltering room. He lowered his glasses and wiped them clean against his shoulder and looked again.
"Wasn't expecting you until tomorrow," he said, picking up a hammer with his single massive arm, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Riderman."
Cyril had lost his right arm in a farming accident ten years prior, but his other arm had enough knowledge of working steel to justify him still inheriting the smith's shop when his father died. With twice the work in one arm, it had grown to a prodigious girth, rippling with each beat of his hammer showering sparks onto the ground below. His other arm was a simple tool, a loop of cloth hanging from his thin vacant elbow for hooking pieces and flinging them out of the fire.
Most of the shop was filled with heaps of scrap metal. Long tubular pipes wrapped around columns of concrete before being beaten and thrashed into more useful shapes. A row of crook's spades hung on the wall. A pile of rifle barrels lay on a table. And a cast for molding steel bullets rested next to a large glowing red spoon in the fire.
Cyril smashed a knife one last time with his hammer before reaching out with his good hand to shake mine.
"Sorry I shake with my left hand," he said grinning, "Alright, you burden. Expect no slack here. You go sit by the fire. You know how to cast bullets?"
I shook my head. Cyril was a friendly man, with a penchant for making the same two jokes over and over again. The first was about not noticing that he was missing an arm. The second was calling me an invalid.
He showed me the art of bullet casting. The bullets we made, he explained, were cast lead and tin balls, designed to be fired from powder pistols and rifles that used something called Serpentine - essentially gunpowder. He had received an order from a traveling war party for additional units. Enough to supply a small army. Of course that wasn't unusual in unconquered territory such as this.
What they might be fighting over didn't concern me, either. If there was any resource worth owning here, the city would have intervened. And there certainly wouldn't be rifles - or a blacksmith - left behind when it had finished. Lucky for Cyril and the rest of the village, there was nothing here. Secretly, I hoped that was true. For their sake. I didn't ask what the rifles were for.
I spent the day casting bullets in the sweltering heat of the forge. My hands learned quickly, but tired with as much ease. It was a relief when I felt Cyril's hand on my shoulder, breaking me from my trance,
"Good work today. You come back tomorrow and we'll make twice as many."
Freezy was there as well, ready to carry me back with a round loaf of bread in her hand. I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and grabbed my crutch, and we headed back. The old woman Anna nodded with satisfaction when she saw how my leg was healing,
"The bone is setting well. In a few months this whole thing will be like a bad dream."
That night I lay awake on the cot staring at the metal nail holding the pillow net in place. Another day lost. I would be healed soon, a whole man in three months. In a sudden and unexpected moment of rage I reached up and pulled the net holding my head, twisting the nail and pulling it from the ceiling. I laid flat, holding the net clutched in my hand. Tomorrow, more bullets.
In the workshop the next day I found Cyril running a long rolling saw across a plank of wood. He looked up with his same friendly grin and said,
"Those soldiers are coming soon. They'll be real happy with your work. I'll be sure to give you credit. You may decide you want to stay after a while."
Wordlessly I wandered to the fire and started pouring flecks of lead into the spoon, melting them easily as they contacted the red hot vessel. The liquid spilled into itself, collecting and rising with a thin noxious steam.
I looked over at Cyril running the blade across wood, pushing with his good arm and slicing through the planks like butter. I looked from him back to the bullet casting and thought about Tyche. That day I didn't quite make my threshold of twice as many bullets as the previous day, but Cyril said it had been a joke anyway and he patted me on the back.
"It takes a while to adjust when you're banged up. I know I've been making jokes at your expense on account of your crippled leg, but trust me. I know all about adjustment," he flapped the strap hanging from his right elbow dramatically with a grin, "Took me a while too. We've got to stick together. At least until you're healed. Then you're not in the club anymore."
Behind Cyril I eyed the rolling blade, a cold sweat breaking up and down my spine as I came to a realization. It was a realization that was nearly lost when Freezy knocked cheerily on the front door,
"Time to call it a day, boys!"
"How long?" I asked, "How long did it take you to adjust?"
"Oh," Cyril said shaking his head with his grin plastered unevenly on his sweat dripping face, "Months to learn how to use the strap."
"How long to heal?" I asked, my eyes still hard on the machine behind him.
"What are you boys talking about?" Freezy asked. She had a loaf of bread and a cup of salt in her hand, "Riderman, what's wrong?"
"You don't want to make old Cyril remember a thing like that. It was a bad dream. A nightmare that lasted days. Almost two weeks before I saw skin again."
"Days," I said. My hand was already on my belt, unbuckling it and ripping it from my trousers.
I wrapped the leather around my leg, looping it through the buckle once and pulling back like a hangman's noose just below the knee. The pain was unbelievable. At least I thought so at the time. I grabbed tongs and fished out the flat lead smelting spoon from the fire, holding the belt tight around my leg and dragging it in the tongs out onto the floor. Freezy had come over to me, her hands around me to steady me,
"What's wrong?"
"Put me on that table," I said gritting my teeth and gesturing with my head.
Freezy had her hand on my shoulder, but the other had moved to my chest, stopping me. Her eyes were hardened now, a look of disbelief mingling with fear. She didn't say anything, though, and after a few seconds wrapped my arm across her back and walked me to the machine.
"Riderman," Cyril said with a shocked chuckle, "I don't think you understand. Your leg is coming back. You can't undo this. In a few weeks you'll be a whole man."
He couldn't do it. I could see him shaking, nearly on the verge of tears now with that grimace of a smile never leaving his face. I turned my attention to Freezy. Her face was different
. Pained, solid, stoic. I rolled back across the threshold of the blade's path. With my eyes filling, I knew I wouldn't last long in this position without changing my mind. With desperate notes I told Cyril,
"I don't have much time. Please."
He was paralyzed, his left hand and strapped elbow reaching for his face, pawing at it as he gasped over and over again. He shook his head,
"No. No, no, no," he said, "I couldn't." I turned to Freezy. There was that hunger again, that understanding. She knew there was a reward for those who could act in the world. She knew the woman she wanted to become. Her mind was already toying with the idea. She was trying to see what might lay beyond the horror of it all. She had what it took to do this. I could tell. I said,
"Please."
My broken leg was out, weighted down by the steel rebar pinning the weakened appendage. With my other leg sliding across the sawdust and the sweat clinging to my hands, I locked eyes with her. I knew she was terrified, but her hand slowly closed around the lever Cyril had used before to push the blade along, to rip into wooden planks as if they were twigs.
"Adon," she said.
"Do it!" I screamed through thick spittle, contorted tension flooding my reddened face, blurring my vision. I gripped the steel chain behind me, wrapped around the back edge of the table. My heart was thumping in my ears, beating like the drums of a death cult in the throes of ecstasy. My fingers were stretched above me, tracing the chain's rivets and locks, trying to focus every bit of my awareness far away from what was about to happen. Locked in that moment I screamed again, "Do it now!"
In a single sickening crack I lost all capacity to form memory.
They say my screams woke up everyone in town. They say it went out into the waste, woke up an army that had been sleeping for nearly a generation in the dust. They say, the storytellers, that the army rose from it with weapons in hand, mistaking that single sustained cry for the sound of a whole war being fought inside one man. They're all liars.
The stump my leg left behind did heal more quickly, with no bone to mend. In two weeks, fourteen pieces of silver, I was seeing skin again. But the short breathed terror of those days is a thing I remember only partially. Those memories are an echo of what I felt in the dreams. The words of Atus followed me, slow and melancholic, to that dark place, a room underground where he shook his head.
