"Let me help." Mom let go of Meliora's hand and took one of the medstat's. Soon she was gasping, and her dress was so drenched with sweat that it clung to her.
"Stop it, Mom, I can do this by myself. Here, medstat."
"No!" Mom met her eyes for longer than ever, her gaze as bright as the red ball in the sky had been.
"I am a person, Meliora, not a burden to be coddled or left behind!"
"But I would never leave you, you know that..."
"No. No. Of course you wouldn't. I am so sorry, my girl." Mom let go of the medstat and hugged her, kissed her face. Mom's face was wet and smelled of sweat and tears.
Unfamiliar smells. Mom had always smelled of the latest soft soap and of the most fashionable perfume. The smells were as unfamiliar as the strange, heavy smell that had permeated the air.
It smelled of storm. The gray-black things in the sky were clouds, and the eerie stillness that had chased the wind away was the calm before the storm.
Just like in the wonderful experiences, or specifically the electrocuted in a thunderstorm one.
Meliora grabbed her mother's and the medstat's hands and started running to the trees.
Trees were shelter. Trees could protect you even from the wrath of the sky. Raindrops started splattering on their heads and arms, hissing as they met the medstat's body, reacting with the heat of the metal.
The medstat shook and screeched as if in protest.
"Come on," Mel urged it. Mom had grabbed the machine's other hand, and the two of them dragged it forward. "Come on, medstat. You can do this. You're made to withstand rain."
Lucastan rain, gentle, scheduled rain that never truly hid the brightlights or softlights when falling. Not rain that battered you into crawling in the grass and mud. A ribbon of brightness split the sky. It was quite different from the sunrise ribbon. A moment later the sky rumbled. Mel thought boulders rolling down a slope would sound like this, or perhaps trains crashing into each other.
"Into the trees..." Mel coughed, spitting out water. It tasted strange, perhaps of sky. "Please, Mom, go faster!" She dragged Mom, crawling, and she dragged the medstat, her pants and shirt tearing at the elbows and knees. The medstat didn't offer to bandage her. It had fallen into the grass and mud, its wheels still rotating in the air. Mel kept dragging it while something inside it screeched from time to time, as if in protest. As if the machine was whimpering.
The wind had come back, but it wasn't the gentle wind of before. It made the rain go sideways, and battered the trees until they, too, screeched.
Mom lost her balance and fell on her stomach, yelping. Mel wrapped one of her arms tightly around her and half carried her. Mom had been beautiful yesterday, but now sad, torn blades of grass marred her hair, and her face was streaked with mud. Her dress clung soaked and shapeless to her limbs, making her look like a doll made of sharp sticks—like one of these ugly toys very little children got, when they were still too young to enjoy the wonderful experiences properly.
No one knew why children and wonderful experiences didn't mix, just like they didn't know why a person couldn't have a mate before they were an adult—and, of course, no one asked.
So easy, Mel thought. It must be so easy to be a true, non-pretending natural. To never wonder about things no one else even noticed but you, to never ache without even knowing what you were aching for.
To never drag your mother through darkness and mud. To never care that your mother would "leave."
"I hate naturals!" Meliora suddenly shouted in the storm, and the rain poured into her mouth and throat, gagging her. She hated the city that had looked at her as if she weren't right since her very birth. She hated the wonderful experiences, the Academy, and Jerome who wouldn't teach her what really mattered—the interweb, too, that ocean of supposed knowledge!
The medstat reached for her with the metal hand she wasn't clutching. Her rain-filled eyes didn't see it, but she felt its gentle tug on her elbow. A shot. It was trying to administer a shot.
"Don't do this—you stupid machine." Meliora coughed, rain sputtering out of her mouth. She jerked her elbow away, and her hand slipped, releasing the medstat's, pushing the medstat away from her. Two seconds after that, the sky erupted in light as if thousands of suns had risen. There was a roar, and the medstat started smoking.
The medstat rolled down the slope and didn't stop until it hit a small lonely boulder. There, the machine lay broken and still. Mel's skin was tingling, and Mom was crying beside her, Mom's belly in the mud and her hands pressed to her ears.
There were other flashes of blinding light. There were other thunders, too. Silently, Mel wrapped an arm around Mom's waist and crawled upwards—fast, and faster, ignoring the searing pain in her hands, knees, and elbows, ignoring the lump in her throat, as well as Mom's dragging weight and hiccups.
The sky went for metal—it went for metal first. She knew it, from the theater of wonderful experiences. She also knew that if a human happened to be touching the metal while lightning struck, the lightning would go for the human, too. It could go straight for the human without the metal.
The medstat had saved her.
Somehow she dragged herself and Mom underneath the trees. They were tall, dark green trees with pointy leaves, like needles. Lucasta didn't have trees like this. Evil witches from children's fairytales did. Needles sprinkled the ground beneath the trees, where it was dark and relatively dry. Mom was gasping harder and started coughing. Mel turned her over and made her spit out some of the water in her lungs. Mom spit out mud, too, and something that looked redder and darker.
Minutes later, when a semblance of breath had returned to her, Meliora crawled on. She left Mom beneath the tree. Mom was in no condition to crawl or be dragged, and Mel had neither a medstat to patch her up, nor even the pills and bandages a medstat carried. The lightning had probably burned them, too—and even if it hadn't, Mel could not risk going out from beneath the trees into the rain and lightning to check.
Without a medstat, you could drown. Jerome had shown her that. Jerome was the first to show her that water wasn't only a friend but also an enemy.
Her food was out there in the rain, too, where she'd dropped her backpack. There must be food somewhere here. Right? That much she remembered from feeds and wonderful experiences. She crawled a bit more, and then the trees ended abruptly. The ground, so far sloping, suddenly plunged down vertically. Raging, fizzling, shining water was falling off the cliff in waves. It could be falling until the end of eternity, for all Meliora knew. The rain itself was subsiding, occasional drops now drifting from the sky.
That waterfall was...beautiful. She spent a moment watching it, even though everything inside her screamed that she must go on, find food, make her mother live. How could nature, so cruel, possess something more beautiful than anything she had ever seen in the city? How could it confuse her like this?
Well, it'd better have something good about it. Something better than ancient models of cleaningstats.
There was something down beside the falling water that looked like shelter. The FastNutritiousDelicious, Inc. that she sought, perhaps. It looked out of place, somehow it didn't belong to nature. Mel must get down to make her purchase, then get back up to Mom...
"Ah, hello young lady," someone said behind her back, and Meliora jumped. "I see you have discovered my home."
Meliora stifled a scream at what she saw.
Witch
The woman looked like Doctor Eryn and Great-Granddad Nicolas—and yet she didn't look like them at all. Eryn and the old Nicolas had hollowed eyes and wrinkles, true, and Meliora had thought that the two of them looked terrible. Now she realized they had only born city wrinkles on their faces, just signs of old age.
This woman's wrinkles were carved by blistering heat and cruel winds. Her skin was as rough as the tree bark beside her or the dirt beneath her feet.
"So it is possible to survive outside of the cities. You must have lived here for years," Mel whispered
.
The old woman cocked an eyebrow. Her eyes bored into Mel's, and even they were different from the eyes of other people, and not only because of how long they kept Mel's gaze. No, those were eyes that day by day had watched a different land, and a different sky.
"You're not alone. Let's get her," the old witch said. Mel hadn't even had the chance to ask for help—hadn't even decided whether she should ask for this stranger's help.
The old witch had taken Mel's hand and was already leading her back up to the trees. Her voice had been clear and bright and her grip was strong.
Mom was lying down beneath the tree where Mel had left her. Her eyes were closed and sweat glistened on her cheeks and eyelids. Her chest was rising and falling in a broken rhythm.
"Oh, the poor dear." The old witch issued a tsk-ing sound with her lips and tongue. Mel had heard it before, from Jerome. It meant disapproval. The witch put her gnarled hand on Mom's forehead. So beautiful. Mom's skin was so smooth and beautiful—and this gnarled hand was now scratching it, marring it, as if it would shove itself inside Mom's face and drink Mom's life away, just like witches did.
I don't trust her. I don't trust her at all.
"Help me carry her down, girl."
There was a lake down there, where the water fell. The witch said that the narrow water strip that extended from the lake was called a river. It went far, far away, the witch said, to a larger river, which went to a lake so big that when you stood on the shore you could not see the other side.
The witch lived by the small river, under one of those big trees with needles. Her home looked like fallen tree trunks clumped together, with two tiny, glass-covered holes for windows and another hole with a swinging plank for a door. There were no streetlights and no sliding doors operated by a computer for the witch. Indeed, Mel saw no computerized station of any kind inside this semi-dark home.
There were two small rooms, one of which held a table and four chairs patched up from rough, uneven planks. The other room had two equally rough beds covered with what looked like something that had come off of a sheep, and another, smaller table with a single chair. The witch pulled one of the covers away and helped Mel lay Mom down, then started piling covers on top of her.
"We need to make her sweat," the witch said, then sat on the chair and started mixing something in a bowl that looked as if it was made from tree bark. Both the table and chair hobbled and creaked beneath her weight, and she didn't look heavy.
"But Mom was sweating before," Mel said. "She didn't like it."
"What one likes and what one needs are not necessarily one and the same," the witch said. The words were soft, almost sad. This softness must be the reason why Mel obeyed and gathered the sheep-like covers from the other bed.
"Sweating will break her fever," the witch said, still softly, while Mel piled layer after layer of covers. The witch's rough hands were holding a new piece of wood, grinding whatever was in the bowl with it. Her voice was pleasant and smooth. It was almost like music. If Mel couldn't have seen her, she'd have imagined a beautiful, young woman instead of this gnarled old monster.
"Appearances can deceive," Eryn had once told her students. It had been in the days when sour, evil-looking Eryn had done her best to make Mel's life a living hell. Back then, the lesson hadn't seemed worth it.
"Give her this." The witch pressed the bowl into Mel's hands. "You washed your hands in the river as I told you? She's not as sick as she could be. This should keep the sickness at bay, for some time at least."
Sickness. The bowl slipped from Mel's hands and hit the ground. The witch shook her head. Then, more swiftly than her crooked body and creaking bones would suggest, she bent and retrieved the bowl. It was almost full, only some of the powder had spilled onto the needles on the floor. The witch inserted her finger first into the bowl and then into Mom's mouth. Mom's eyelids flickered and she moaned like a little child who was having a bad dream.
"I'll go make food. And you—you get a grip on yourself, girl. If your hands continue shaking like this, you won't be able to help me, and I can't be doing everything by myself with a sick person in the house."
The witch walked away from the room, swinging the plank-door closed behind her.
Get a grip.
There was a strange contraption leaning casually against the wall by the bed. Meliora of Lucasta, Doctor of Computers, People, and Nature, had never seen one in her life. Yet, she knew it. It was there in the children's fairytales and adults' wonderful experiences. It was in her heart right now, pulsing and thumping like the heart itself. At least, that was how it felt in her hands, when she gripped it and stood guard by her mother's bed.
Sickness didn't exist. Anything but sickness from young age didn't exist, and that looked and felt differently! Witches could cause sickness. Witches could lie to you, even eat you, whatever that meant.
"Ah." The witch's voice was still soft. She'd just opened the door again. "I see you have found the axe. Good. I will need you to chop some wood for me tomorrow. Or, judging by your unbounded energy, even tonight."
Meliora raised the axe higher.
"Stay away from us, witch."
"Or else?" The witch laughed, the sound as sweet and musical as anything that could come from a Lucastan musicstat. "Do you even know what the thing you're holding is, my sweet city girl?"
"Yes. I know what it is. And I am not your sweet girl. I am Meliora."
"Well, pleased to make your acquaintance, young lady. I am Stella."
"Stay away!"
"You intend to use the axe for killing," the witch said mildly. "Or perhaps you don't intend this per se, but it is what you might end up doing, anyway." Yet again, the witch kept Meliora's gaze for longer than anyone else ever had. Meliora, an unnatural, had to fight with herself in order to withstand this gaze. "Have you ever killed, Meliora?"
"I have."
Did she only imagine the flicker of surprise in the witch's eyes and the tiny, almost imperceptible step back?
Meliora was surprised, herself—surprised at the softness of her own voice that didn't feel soft at all.
"A year ago, I killed a medstat so that I wouldn't become a natural, and I killed a computer so that it would keep my secrets. Today, I killed another medstat. I'd brought it with me to take care of my mother and myself, and lightning hit it instead of hitting me. But I know what you're asking. You're asking if I have ever killed people. Old witch, do you really think it is that different?"
"Witch? I told you my name was Stella. But go on. You think you can do something—then do it."
"You think I can't? I swear it, witch, I can! You won't tell me she is sick! You won't lie to me that you're taking care of us, while all the while you make me work, and feed her, and make her fat so that you can eat her! I know how the story goes! But I won't let it happen!"
"Ah." Softness again. "Which story would that be? The witch in the gingerbread cottage? But my home is not so delicious, Meliora."
"I saw your furnace," Meliora whispered. "Out there in the other room." In Lucasta, fire and furnaces, like sickness, only existed in the feeds and wonderful experiences. Fire was a bad thing. It swallowed homes and made people leave before their time.
"You remember fairytales enough to recognize something you have never seen, and you want to fight a story. Interesting." The witch inclined her head. Mel was panting, the unfamiliar handle too big in her hands, the axe too heavy. Her heart was beating so fast that if there were a medstat in the room, it would have come running.
"I'll fight anything that would hurt her!"
"Well, what are you waiting for, girl? Didn't you think that killing would be easy?"
It must be. Had she not seen it—had she not done it—in the wonderful experiences? She'd been through war, and she'd been through famine—but no. Famine was different. Famine was where you left because of lack of food. And she hadn't truly done it. She didn't remember doing it. She only remembered pictures—a splash of color here and there, a
nd some words, and the hint of an emotion that made you jerk your eyes open only to see the special wonderful experiences medstat hover above you with a needle.
With all her strength, Meliora sent the axe to the wall. It became lodged between two planks, quivering.
"Tea now," the witch said.
In the kitchen, she pressed a rough cup into Meliora's hand.
The witch was grinding something in a bowl again. Mel sat on a chair across from her and picked a second bowl and a grinder. She was faster than the witch. The contents of her bowl turned into smooth pulp while the witch's still looked like distinct leaves. The witch stuffed new leaves into Mel's bowl. A moment later, she had to do it again. And again.
The witch shoved the bowl away from Mel and took Mel's hands into hers. She reached out for a jar and sprinkled Mel's hands with powder. Mel looked at her hands. They were bleeding, but she hadn't felt any of it. The witch slapped her face. She didn't feel that, either. Then, slowly, finally, she did. She started crying, and cried until she thought she'd shed more water than the storm—until something inside her became dry and she thought she'd never have tears again.
This wasn't a fairytale or a wonderful experience. This was—Mel didn't even know what it was, but perhaps this old woman could help her navigate through it. The old woman lived here all alone, without a medstat, without the care that the Cities gave their residents. She knew how to take care of herself. Perhaps she knew even the secrets that the Cities never told.
"I told you I would kill you, and you urged me on. Why?" Mel's voice was hollow, the voice of a stranger.
The witch looked at her for a long time. Mel was starting to get used to this gaze, which wouldn't leave hers alone. "You poor child who stands on the edge of worlds," the woman said. "One day you will have to step one way or another."
"Who are you?"
"Is evil old witch not enough for you already?"
"You're not her."
"Oh? Who is she, then? She has a bigger furnace, perhaps. One that can actually fit a child—or a grown woman—in it. As it goes, mine only has space for small pieces of meat. And for bread."
Unnaturals Page 11
