Seven Threads

by Jason Fischer

  "This is a good day," the guides said as they crept under the upturned barge to sleep for the night. They were pressed cheek to jowl, sweating in the mud, mosquitoes and leeches feasting on them by the dozen.

  "How so?" Reft said, so terrified that this came out as a squeak.

  "Lucky to only lose one person on the first day. You will journey far, heretic."

  Each day brought its own terror. The miasma came in thick at one point, and the guides passed around bandannas soaked in vinegar, with gauze strips to cover the eyes.

  Then, the waterways ended in a treacherous bog, miles across. They broke apart the barge, and used the planks as a mobile pathway. One person at the front would test the ground with the pole, and others would lay the planks, the last in the row passing the planks overhead as they travelled.

  Travel slowed to a crawl. A lone dactyl flew across the bog, intent on the stilt villages. The guides froze into place, hoping the lizard did not spy them in the open.

  "Our luck holds," one woman said as the dactyl flew to mischief elsewhere.

  It was then that Doom found Reft. She crossed the bog at a run, never slipping in the mud, never falling to quick-sand, passing unmolested over the snakes that had killed one of the guides.

  Wide-eyed, the guides moved their planks as fast as they could. One starved boy fell into a slurry, and they had to leave him behind, choking on the mud that instantly drew him under. Always, that implacable advance, a whip of a girl loping across that murderous field, mocking their efforts to flee.

  "Pale Daughter," one guide gasped. They raised their spears and hatchets, but Doom walked amongst them, unnaturally strong and quick. One struck her square in the breast-bone with a spear, but the bronze spearhead did little more than scratch her skin. Wherever a blade was raised against her, she took it as if an offering to her, and butchered the guides with speed and savagery.

  Reft fell to her knees in the mud, weeping as Doom stood above her. She dropped a bloody hatchet at her feet.

  "You ran, mother," she said. "You've got a year left, and you ran."

  "I had to," she said. "I'm dead now, or tomorrow, or in a year by your hand. I want to see it, just the once."

  "See what?"

  "Where the world ends."

  Doom lifted Reft to her feet.

  #

  Doom was at home in the Murk. The beasts of the underworld would not molest her, and it was as if she had a map of the landscape in her head, charting the path with the surest footing.

  Every night, she would return to their camp with an eel or a fish, and a lump of dried peat to cook it on. Around them, the cacodrills barked and the eels snapped, but Reft felt safe, more secure with her Doom than she had in her own bed.

  The rot and the fog began to eat at Reft's lungs, and she developed a hacking cough within a month of their journey. Doom took them to a sweet-river, even though it tacked against their heading. The wind down the water blew the miasma clear, and Reft breathed a little easier.

  "There it is," Doom said, reaching an arbitrary point in their path. She paced left and right, as if unable to pass. "This is the furthest point."

  Reft realised it was the Circus. She stepped past her Pale Daughter, and crossed the invisible line herself. Doom frowned, and strained, and finally followed Reft, though the effort seemed to tax her greatly.

  "Beyond here I know nothing," she said.

  #

  Reft grew ill, and knew that something had taken root in her lungs. There were entire days where she lost herself, raving and splashing around in that poisonous underworld.

  Occasionally she woke to find that Doom was carrying her, never missing a beat as she hauled a fully grown woman through sludge and mangrove. She urged Doom to move faster, even as she struggled to remember how many days he had left.

  "Why do we persist in this heresy?" Doom asked. Reft wheezed laughter, only stopping when Doom trickled water into her mouth.

  "There is only the Archipelago, and the Murk stretches beyond this forever and ever," Doom frowned. "To suggest otherwise is against the laws of crab and woman."

  "So why do you help me?"

  "You are my mother," Doom said. "I must honour you, until your last moment."

  "How long do I have?" Reft asked, unsure if she was speaking of her death sentence, or the other death that grew within her.

  "Three months tomorrow," Doom said.

  She walked, she was carried, she lay on some sort of sled. Always, the tireless metronome of Doom, trudging forward, a killer giving her life. Doom fed her slices of eel, fish, birds that she plucked from the air.

  Reft dreamt of her early life with Eakr, the love they'd shared when they were young and yet to be broken by the world. The hopes they'd had for each of their babies, the plans they had made! He'd been kind once, with many smiles and soft kisses.

  The fever dream shifted, and now she bounced her baby boys on her knee, taught them to walk on the deck. Two of them dead now, and the third to be cast out with no dowry to speak of, and so worse than dead.

  She'd as good as killed her boys by running away like this. Reft woke, weeping.

  She saw they were on a true river, the fattest vein of water that Reft had ever seen. Clarity came to her, and she realised that she was on a huge crab-shell, flipped over to make a raft. Doom paced the edges, pole in hand. She did not need it.

  "We move swiftly," the girl said, eyes wide. All the water Reft had ever seen was sluggish or still. This river gushed like an artery spilled, and it seemed like a wound to the Murk, an affront to the world.

  "Why are you blind here?" Reft said. "Why didn't you know of this thing?"

  Doom would not answer, poling them around a tangle of logs and roots.

  "Many years ago, I spoke with a murderer who had a Pale Daughter," Reft said. "He said she spoke with crabs in her dreams, even though learning their tongue is against the laws of crab and woman."

  "What of it?"

  "When you spoke to Old Char about the new island, you were whispering in their language. I heard you clearly. And it troubled you to pass the Circus, where no crab may wander."

  "What are you saying, Reft the heretic?" Doom said. She held the pole tightly, as if ready to brain her with it.

  "You know what I am saying," Reft said. "There are the laws of crab and woman, but no laws for crabs alone, or for women. And here you are, beyond your own laws and your own empire. What is it that you want to see when we finally stop?"

  "I want to see your death," Doom said. "I want to give you to the Murk, and return to the House of the Pale Daughters."

  "I don't believe you," Reft laughed, breaking into a coughing fit. "Neither of us is ever going back."

  Doom would not answer, and watched the river thoughtfully.

  #

  The mangroves grew thickly here, and the poisonous funk that clung to the Murk was finally gone. On the last day of her purchased life, Reft the heretic awoke to a sweet smell. It was fresh, the cleanest air she'd ever breathed, with a tang she could not place.

  "We must be near the end," she said. "The Murk itself is breaking into pieces."

  The river became a thousand other rivers, winding through a delta of islands. By the bow of their raft, schools of bright little fish danced, without an eel or cacodrill to be seen.

  "This is heaven," Reft said. She barely had the strength to lift her hand now, and Doom knelt beside her as she trailed her hand in the water, unafraid of losing it.

  Then they slid through that final envelope of trees, and there was nothing surrounding them, nothing but open water ahead for as far as they could see. It was overwhelming, and Reft gibbered, terrified, awestruck at the sight.

  Doom stood in the crab shell, and for the first time since she'd know the girl, Reft saw fear wash across her face. Doom frantically fought against the movement of the water, poling their crab-raft until it caught against the last spit of land.

  "What is that?" she whispered, tears falling down her fa
ce. She shook like a leaf, and soon Reft and Doom were holding each other, unable to comprehend so much water in one place.

  "It was really here," Reft said. "The edge of the world."

  Doom helped Reft to stand, and they slowly walked to the edge of the mud bank, the dying woman finally kneeling at the very edge of all things. Doom joined her, watching as the waves lapped in and out, with nothing ahead of them but a horizon of water, razor flat and terrifying.

  "Was it worth it?" Doom asked.

  "I destroyed my family for this. I lost my life for this," Reft said, and she wept.

  The sun set into that awful sight, and as the horizon turned into fire, Doom slid a knife into her mother's heart, rocking her to sleep as the water drank her life blood.

  #

  She was free for the first time in eight years. The girl who killed Reft the heretic felt the distant pull of High Claw, the urge to return to the House of the Pale Daughters, who were not really daughters at all.

  There was a power in the Circus, the laws of crab and woman, an irresistible force that held this land in a pincer grip. She looked down on the body of Reft, her open eyes staring to the horizon, to the freedom of the water.

  “I loved you,” she said, weeping over her mother’s body, salty tears dropping into the blood and foam. Doom felt the deep ache of loss in her chest. She’d never told her while she drew breath.

  This far from the invisible draw of home, she was more woman than crab, and she felt sorrow. Anger.

  Rebellion.

  Doom pushed her crab-raft into the waves, and poled towards the horizon. A current caught the raft, and she slowly bobbed forward. The Pale Daughter did not look back.

  Rolling For Fetch

  When Whip went skeg, he arranged a meet with a back-alley butcher, a coin-friend whose pockets rattled with illegal meds. When the coast was clear the gear was brought out of hiding. The stained hack-saw was much neater than an axe.

  The amateur surgeon cauterised the stumps with an old oxy-set while his chums kept lookout for the pol. He threw the feet over his shoulder for the dogs to snap up.

  The best surgeons claimed that they could do the chop and fit a skeg with a rig in five minutes or less, but Sad Pepe’s personal best was seven minutes even. Anything else was either boasting or butchery.

  The main struts of a skeg rig eventually fused with the shin-bone, but the first month or so it was just stainless steel pegs and wires, driving Whip’s immune system nuts. He’d been dosed with dirty nano-work, old cancer-killing stock bred into a dubious cure-all. A nostalgic fallacy, given the filth on the street and the clip-clop of horse shoes on asphalt.

  The drive train went underneath the muscle itself, something like the innards of an old clock, a mesh of gears and cogs. Then the winder cranks, one in each leg, protruding between the peroneus longus and the tibialis anterior, reminding the world that anyone mad enough to actually go through with this was not a human now. More a wind-up toy with a death-wish.

  Finally, a pair of wheels were connected to the bottom of the rig, hooked up to the drive-train dangling from each bleeding leg. The most popular option was a pneumatic tyre with a knobbly grip, one foot in diameter, filled with smart-gel to ward off punctures, magic goop to heal over little nicks and tears.

  Good suspension was a must.

  When Whip survived this procedure, shook off the inevitable infection, unlearnt the life-long art of walking and earnt his gangdanna, he had the right to call himself a skeg.

  #

  Whip never stopped rolling. He slept upright like the horses he’d once curried, rolling around in slow circles, motivators clicking as the tension slowly bled from his rig. The constant ache in his legs became a dull absence, and even the lowest gears began to struggle as his muscles and tendons relaxed.

  For that moment, Whip was nothing more than a cripple, a tottering freak with several kilograms of metal and rubber protruding from his mutilated legs.

  Whip knelt down, winding the cranks, feeling the first delicious tickle as his muscle fibres stretched. He redoubled his efforts, until every muscle from the hip down burned with tension. Motivators humming, he could feel the potential, and Whip danced on the spot like a Lipizzaner in dressage, testing the rig. He was ready to roll.

  Five years in from his own chop, and Whip was a world removed from the stable-lad he’d been. His legs were enormous, twin trunks of muscle, and his only concession to decency was a filthy kilt. His hair and beard were a knotty tangle, partially hidden beneath a gangdanna.

  An arc of goth-print rose above his navel, the ink rainbow pasted across his abs reading NEVA STOP ROLLIN’.

  Whip usually went lookout, keeping an eye on his mob, tonight kipped out in a run down park. The abandoned edges of the old burba were best for skegs, and the pol rarely visited, save to scope for looters.

  “Reveille, you dozing dogs!” Whip shouted, scooting through the pack of snoring freaks, clipping his wheels against theirs. Cursing, his mob met the dawn, grumbling and winding their own leg cranks. Some of them hit the go-powder, passing around a paper funnel and drawing in that magic dust through red-ringed nostrils.

  “Don’t sob so hard for a bed and a pair of shoes, me grumpy chums. You all wanted this life,” Whip laughed, rolling down an ancient and rusted slippery-dip.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t want Lord Whip crowing every dawn,” young Rabbit said, and the mob whistled and clapped.

  “Alright, you bunch of sooking babs, we’re off to the metro,” Whip said through a wide grin. “I’ve got an inkling that there’s good fetch at Jona Smif’s today.”

  They rolled through the inner burba, a mob just over a dozen strong, laughing and jostling and darting through the morning traffic, baker’s nags and the last of the crap-carters. Whip rolled at the front, legs sweeping and motivators whining, working up through the gears until he was somewhere between a canter and a gallop. When a milkman cursed them for spooking his horse, Whip rolled backwards, pointing to his tattoo and staring at the man, daring him to go for the switch.

  The man looked away, swallowing his outrage, and Whip laughed. The rest of his mob whipped past the cart like hornets, fly-wheels whining, and the old nag jerked around in its harness, terrified by the noise and the speed of these butchered men.

  The fetch-house of Jona Smif was a squat lean-to, cheap like the man himself. The mismatched fibro shell was connected to the power and best of all, the tellingphone. Smif was the real deal and all the mobs knew it.

  “Look there,” someone said, and Whip saw another skeg mob, sprawled across the footpath like feral dogs. He didn’t know their gangdanna, and didn’t care. They’d staked out Smif’s joint, and he wanted it.

  “Roll on now,” Whip told them. “Or grief.”

  One of them arced up, a wirey little bruiser with a mouth to her. Skeg women were a hard kind, nothing feminine left to them after they swapped their feet for wheels. She launched into a string of foul language, and so it was grief that they chose.

  The mobs circled each other, testing and baiting and waiting for one to make the first move. The street cleared of walkin-folk in seconds. This new mob had strength in numbers, but some of them looked new to their rigs, and Whip reckoned on them not being worth squat in a rumble.

  They did for them, but not before their mouthpiece pulled some ballerina move, clocking Rabbit in the head with one of her wheels. Such flexibility he might have appreciated under different circumstances, but the skinny kid was left shaking the pain out of his brain-pan as the other mob rolled on.

  “Can’t even see straight,” Rabbit said shakily when he stood, and Whip swore. He was the quickest skeg rolling under his gangdanna, and knew the metro better than any of them. They would have to work double hard to make up for his thumped noggin.

  Then the first jobs came in over the tellingphone, and Jona Smif was out on the stoop, handing out chits and haggling over the fetch-fee.

  “This one’s right urgent,” he said,
“Plans or summat, got to be before the suits within the hour.”

  Grimacing, Whip knelt down and took the chit out of Smif’s hand. He was the only one who could do the fetch, but he didn’t know the area as well as Rabbit, who seemingly had all the shortcuts carved onto the insides of his eyeballs.

  He poured on the speed as he rolled to the pick-up, a munici depot. To Whip’s eternal shame, he got the address wrong. He rolled around, thumbing through his old road-book and cursing, finally hitting the right depot.

  “Quick now,” some daft desk-jockey told him as he stuffed the rolled sheaf of paper into his pack. “You’re right late.”

  There’d be hell to pay if he muffed this, and Jona Smif might not pony up with the fetch-fee. Always a first time for everything, but Whip didn’t have to like it.

  Not paying attention as he read his grid-guide, he moved through the horses, steam-carts and bicycles by instinct but didn’t see some poor lady making to cross the street. He knocked her onto her broad backside, sent her groceries flying.

  He might have hung around and helped her pick up if he’d the time. As it was, the minutes were falling by. A wave of apology was the best he could give as he kept rolling, but this was seen by a polizei, who turned the klaxon on his coughing steam-bike and gave chase.

  “Stop, skeg!” the chubby law-lark yelled through a loudhailer. Whip spared them a glance, and saw the pol in the side-car cranking on a wireless tellingphone.

  “Never stop rolling,” he said to himself.

  Head bent he laid the power on, sweeping his legs and working through the gears until the motivators screamed, whining like they might fall apart.

  He pulled away from the pol, and took a cunning left through a cramped street-fair. He flipped the bird and laughed at the pair, who turned their great sputtering machine around and took off with an angry roar.

  “Left you damn fools in my spin,” he laughed.

  But it was far from good. The law was probably staking the main roads, and he’d have to sneak through the curly little alleys and lanes to get to the drop-off.