Fallen World

by Ben van Eijk

  Gary’s arm loosened its grip on the metal staff as he began talking calmly with Seth, about the town of Dewall and the recent murder. Seth still hadn’t mastered the art of making matter disappear, so he made himself a jagged metal staff and carefully broke the mud bars encasing Nigel. Nigel hopped back towards the door, muttering curses about bipeds. Seth sat cross-legged on the floor while Gary explained the situation to Seth from atop his mud table.

  An hour later Seth was walking towards the south of Dewall in search of an Evodent called Lauren. She was the one that had found the victim lying in two halves. The victim’s name was Chris and he was – according to Gary – a very peaceful person. He lived alone on his farm. Sometimes he had people to help him, when tending the farm alone became too much at the turn of a good season, but otherwise not many people saw him. Dewall was actually one of many small towns housing the Evodents; there were two neighbouring villages to the north of Dewall, both much larger. These villages were called Jesterton and Lurless. Dewall was the southernmost village of a larger network, and was mainly a farming town.

  According to the map Seth had borrowed from Gary he was getting close to Lauren’s property. He looked up from his map and on the side of the path was a gate in the fence bordering the road. Seth approached the gate and peered over it: in the distance across a green grass field he saw a small mud house. He opened the gate and walked across the field slowly. Around him he heard the mooing of cows. He suddenly realised the fence of this property actually came up to his chest; it hadn’t registered before because to Seth that was the size it should have been. The fences of this property were clearly built to keep cows and not like the knee-high fences he had been seeing on the way to Lauren’s cow farm. As he got closer to the cottage, Seth saw some cows moving around just beyond small abode.

  Two hundred metres further and Seth knelt down so he could knock on the door of the small mud hut. But just before his hand made contact with the door, Seth saw something strange: one of the cows had started running as if something were chasing it. Seth noticed that its udder was much larger than the rest of the cows’, almost double in size. As the animal was running, what looked like a piece of its udder fell to the ground and stood up on one leg. This must have been Lauren; apparently she was the cause of the cow’s distress. It stopped running once she had let go of its udder.

  Seth approached her. The small Evodent had one left arm, holding a coil of rope with an end knotted around her ankle. She still hadn’t noticed Seth and continued her activity. The arm holding the rope threw it lasso-style and caught the udder of the now-still cow, then pulled back quickly on the rope to tighten the end encircling the cow’s udder. The cow mooed in distress and starting running as it had earlier. The Evodent pulled herself along the rope while being dragged, grasping the rope between her teeth and then her hand. Eventually she was back with one foot on the udder, standing horizontally with the rope between her teeth. She wrapped her leg with more rope to secure herself and then used her free hand to grab a small glass container held against her body with a length of rope. She put the bottle between her teeth and her body tipped upside down until the glass bottle was directly under one of the teats. The Evodent then proceeded to squeeze milk from the udder with her hand, catching it in the bottle. She continued until the glass container was almost full.

  The cow was still running but it had slowed down, either from fatigue or resignation. Eventually it stopped and the Evodent dropped off. She now had the glass bottle in her hand and was tumbling through the glass, not spilling a single drop. She jumped up and hopped to a table nearby where many full bottles of milk stood. As the female Evodent placed the bottle on the table she looked up and saw Seth watching her. She used her one arm to swing the rope so it coiled around her shoulder, and hopped towards Seth.

  “Well, I didn’t know any humans had managed to survive the shockwave! What are you doing on my property?” The small creature bouncing towards Seth had a very smooth voice that sounded like it came solely from the back of the throat. He imagined she would have a great singing voice.

  “My apologies, I came here on behalf of Gary, the… chief of police, I guess? I wanted to ask you about the body you found,” Seth said to the female Evodent.

  “Ah, ok. I would have appreciated Gary being here too — it’s not often you find a human investigating a murder in Dewall.”

  “You are Lauren, right?” Seth asked the tiny lady.

  She looked at Seth without the slightest sign of emotion.

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe the death of Chris was a murder?” Seth asked as a cow mooed in the background.

  Lauren looked up at Seth and took a hop backwards as she spoke.

  “Yes of course! The poor man was cut in half, nothing natural about that! And he never hurt anyone I tell you. We would say hello to each other every day at midday over the fence, without fail, but today I looked over the fence and didn’t see him anywhere.”

  Seth looked at Lauren thoughtfully not saying anything, so she continued with her story.

  “I called out his name but heard nothing. I wanted to find him so we could have one of our chats, but found his body cut in half with bloody grass all around him! The halves were cut so perfectly it couldn’t be a natural phenomenon. To be honest, it’s something I would expect from a human. Did you bring anyone with you when you came here?”

  Again Seth stood in silence looking down at Lauren. He exhaled deeply.

  “No, I came here alone. I don’t know why humans have such a bad reputation here; where I come from they are honest, caring people… well, mostly... well, actually no they’re not, especially stupid Kurt.” Seth stood looking at the Evodent, she seemed to be backing away slowly but with one foot it was difficult to make it look subtle. Seth continued.

  “Okay. I see why humans might have a bad reputation, we are not all nice people, but surely you have the same among your Evodents right? I mean, what were you doing to that poor cow when I arrived here? That didn’t look very pleasant.” Lauren stopped shuffling backwards through the grass and looked at the cow.

  “I was milking her! She was a little bit spooked today so she’s not cooperating — that’s why I had to get the milking rope out — but I treat Artemisia and all the other cows just fine,” and a cow mooed as if to agree with her.

  Seth looked at the cow which had now turned to stare at him and Lauren. Its tail appeared intermittently as it swung back and forth, catching Seth’s eye. He noticed the small tuft of hair that normally tipped a cow’s tail was trimmed in a very neat straight line.

  “And you shave all of their tails too?” Seth asked, gesturing towards poor, spooked Artemisia. The look on Lauren’s face changed to one of surprise and she turned around to look at said cow.

  “What?” she said as she hopped to Artemisia to inspect her tail. “Well, I believe you found the reason she was spooked, Mr. Human — probably the same thing that killed Chris.”

  Seth raised one eyebrow as he looked at the tail of the cow and back to Lauren.

  “Hmm, maybe, but I prefer to collect more evidence before I start coming to those kinds of conclusions.”

  Lauren looked at Seth as she spoke “That is wise, but he didn’t just cut Artemisia’s tail, he cut all the branches from one side of the oak tree on Chris’ property too. And cut one of the trees on my property in half too, as well as slicing up poor Chris during his journey.”

  Seth brought his hand up to his chin as he thought about what Lauren had just said. Apparently some force had cut a straight line, beginning from the oak tree in the distance to this tree that Lauren had just pointed out. The tree on Laurens property had a perfect slice through the middle of the trunk. Both halves were leaning slightly away from each other, no longer clinging together, and would probably fall over in time. Whatever had cut the tree had almost certainly sliced Chris in half, and Artemisia’s tail hairs right off.

  Seth finished his train of thought and stopped starin
g at the sky to look back at Lauren but she spoke before he could ask anything.

  “The only thing I can think of is either one of those cursed humans — sorry — did it, or they have made some sort of new technology in Stique that hasn’t reached Dewall yet.”

  Seth closed his mouth, forgetting what he was going to ask Lauren. He was honestly not the best investigator, but he wanted to show these people that humans deserved a better reputation — maybe not the best reputation but certainly they were not the first people to think of when mentioning criminals or rapscallions. Seth formulated a new question.

  “How do I get to Stique? I think I want to ask some questions there.”

  Lauren suddenly became friendly, although most likely it was because she realised he was about to leave and she could get on with her bovine acrobatics. She led Seth into her small cottage and showed him a map displaying the network of all the villages of the Evodents. Stique was about three villages above Dewall. It was the centre of all of the villages and seemed to have the most complex network of roads. Seth put his hand to the map and an exact replica appeared in the air next to it. It drifted to the ground, causing Lauren to jump. He picked up his copy of the map and left the house as he said goodbye to her. Seth thought she had a rather strange look on her face as he left — but all Evodent faces looked strange to him. Hunger inspired him to head back to his home and grab something from his garden.

  Seth propelled himself through the sky, manipulating the air currents beneath him and noticed he was improving and even getting more stylish at it. Once he was high enough, he spotted his house just outside one of the nearby farms. There were five Evodents gathered around it. Seth flung himself towards the segment, still saddled in dirt, and eased himself down onto the grass. The Evodents around him shouted with surprise as he landed. They had been attempting to climb their way onto his segment. The Evodents scattered like frightened rodents before Seth had time to respond.

  Seth lifted his concrete ship into the air with his usual snaking tunnel of fierce wind. When he looked down at the ground it seemed completely peaceful, with only the air directly beneath him moving. He grabbed a handful of vegetables from his garden and began munching on them. He then looked at the map he had reproduced, and directed his vessel towards Stique, the largest city of Evodents.

  It only took about thirty minutes for Seth to reach the outskirts of Stique. The towns might have been big by Evodent standards, but for Seth and his flying house it had been a minor journey; he had actually gone quite slowly so he could comfortably finish eating his lunch. Seth parked his house in a cradle of dirt again, but this time about fifty metres above ground level to avoid any Evodent incursions into his house. Then he eased himself to the ground to begin exploring the town of Stique. The houses here were bigger and had many more doors and windows. There were Evodents everywhere, none of whom had the time to stop and stare at Seth. A lot of them here were carrying the same type of staff, the top of which was an almost exact replica of a hand, only the surface was unnaturally smooth and it appeared to have two opposable thumbs.

  Seth tried his hardest to avoid stepping on any Evodents as he explored Stique, but his concern was unnecessary, as they seemed to scatter before him; like a shark through a school of fish. Apparently the Evodents here were used to humans. Seth noticed some of the buildings were actually taller than him, and seemed like they would be very complicated inside. There were many balconies and staircases encompassing the outside of the buildings. The dirt here seemed to be darker and of a higher quality; most of the buildings actually had what could be called corners, unlike Dewall’s rounded piles of dirt. Seth came to an open plane with a few trees scattered about. Many Evodents were lying in the grass surrounding the trees, some in groups chatting while others were sitting alone performing various activities.

  Some of the Evodents here seemed to be doubled; it looked like some of them had actually been fused together, creating a creature with two legs and two arms. These coupled were the only Evodents who did not carry a staff. It seemed that with two legs the paired Evodents no longer had any need for a staff to stabilise them and could function as a biped. Seth imagined that Nigel would not be very impressed by Stique. Seth bent over to ask two paired Evodents walking past him now about their different appearance.

  “Excuse me, may I ask you two something?” Seth asked, loud enough to get their attention.

  A few people stopped to look at him. It almost seemed like they were laughing at Seth before they resumed relaxing in the park. The two joined Evodents stopped and looked at Seth, confused. They spoke to each other like Seth was not even there.

  “Is he speaking to us? Hmm, he must not know” said the right Evodent in a deep voice.

  “No, I don’t think he does dear. We can’t hear you human — do you see any ears here?” said the left Evodent in a feminine voice.

  Seth looked up from the two and scanned his surroundings. The Evodents all had one ear on their bodies, and the ear was opposite whichever side their arm was on. He looked back at the couple and realised they were joined right where their ears would be, so apparently this pairing sacrificed the Evodents’ hearing. It seemed a strange thing to do, only being able to communicate with one person for the rest of your life, but apparently the Evodents saw this melding as being worth the sacrifice. Seth apologised, but realising straight away they couldn’t hear him, he bowed slightly. Seth was already bent over slightly so he was in danger of falling over and waved his arms around slightly as he regained his balance. The two Evodents eyes moved to look at each other, and then they walked away.

  There weren’t that many double Evodents walking around. Stique was still a hopping city for the most part, but there was always at least a couple within eyesight. On the other side of the park (which was actually quite large even for human standards — it seemed the Evodents took their recreation very seriously) there stood many Evodents close together. There were two groups standing in rows, all facing one Evodent who stood on a raised platform in front. Behind the Evodent on the platform were colourful fabrics fashioned into a small tent. The one-footed being was making a speech, so Seth moved in closer to hear what he was saying.

  When Seth could hear him properly, it turned out to be a her, and she was talking about some kind of sacred union.

  “... it is important that we leave these two with a good noise, a nice sound. They are not sacrificing their hearing, but focusing on each other. After the sacred melding they will be able to hear each other better than ever, and only each other. Many are too scared, too frightened to take such a leap like this, but Shaun and Linda have grown so close to each other they have decided to meld. When the barrier-builders created us so many years ago, they gave us the gift of love, and the love between these two is so deep they need only hear each other’s voices for the rest of their lives.”

  Seth started listening extra intently now; the mention of “barrier-builders” had piqued his interest. He was still at a complete loss as to how this network of villages had survived the shockwave that tore Swevender apart. Seth felt like this moment could point him towards something or someone associated with matter manipulation, or element binding.

  The Evodent continued her speech.

  “Shaun and Linda are behind me while we perform the sacred melding. We are almost at the stage where they lose their ability to hear us; I would like you all to go into the tent, one by one, and say the last things you would like them to hear from you.”

  The Evodents all rose a few inches. Seth realised this was them standing up, and one of the melding participants hopped forward. The speaker pivoted to the side and held her hand out to welcome the Evodent as it disappeared inside the tent. One minute later the Evodent reappeared and hopped back to its original spot. The Evodent adjacent hopped forward and bounced into the tent, taking only thirty seconds to say their last message. There were tears running down its face as it moved back to its place. This went on until almost all of the Evodents had
been in and out of the tent. The speaker shouted things every now and again: “Praise the builders of the barriers, the creator of the Evodents” and “Together, the Wandering Cross is only a short walk away”.

  Seth was curious as to what was going on inside the tent. He brought his hand up to focus on the small silver bead on the ring circling his middle finger. He became smaller and smaller, but at a much more controlled rate than he had the first time he tried. When he was about two centimetres tall, he started to fly through the middle of the proceedings and into the tent. Inside the tent lay two Evodents, ear to ear with their eyes rolling up into the back of their heads. Seth was a little shocked and stared at them. There was another Evodent standing next to the them. The two Evodents were lying on a metal table and there were short metal poles sticking out of the ground surrounding the table. The conscious Evodent supported himself with the poles, and moved around from pole to pole.

  Seth was sent flying through the air as another Evodent pushed the tent flap open to enter. He steadied his floating; it seemed to be much easier than normal. Being so small made him much lighter and with less weight to blow around. Seth turned around and saw a fourth Evodent hopping towards the table. He stopped just short of the two Evodents, now almost drooling. His last words to them were trembling with emotion:

  “You two have made me the saddest Evodent alive. I would have travelled to The Wandering Cross and back ten times for you Linda, I would have fought the Twins for you. I can’t believe you would fall in love with an oaf like Shaun. I wanted to be an adult about this but I think the most adult thing is to be honest, no matter how much you don’t want to hear it. But it’s too late anyway, you and Shaun are here on the slab together and the Domestic just needs to perform the last few steps. I already hate the sound of Shaun’s voice — I hope the same doesn’t happen to you, Linda,” and the sad Evodent hopped back outside, slumping his one shoulder.