Unnaturals

by Merrill, Lynna

  "Meat. Animal pieces from the farms," Mel said in her stranger's voice. "You don't even have a cookingstat. You have to cook them yourself, like you make tea. How do you get them from the farms? Even in the Academy, we..." Her voice trailed away.

  "I'll show you exactly how I get them."

  "Thank you," Mel said. "And, you said that one day I'd have to step one way or the other, but I have already stepped, and you know it. You're just testing me, checking how much I know and how far I am willing to go. I am not the first city runaway you have seen, am I? You know us. You wait for us. And you look like the evil old witch, but appearances can deceive. I believe you're the One Who Shows the Way."

  The witch—Stella—started laughing. "I suppose this is as apt a name as any."

  "I'll tell you how far I will go, then—I'll go as far as it gets. As far as is needed." Mel glanced at the axe, now leaning against the kitchen wall. "But no farther than that."

  ***

  Mel and the witch went to get meat when the next brightlights period came.

  "It's called day," the witch said.

  "We call it brightlights. Why use different words for the same thing?"

  "Because it is not the same thing." The witch pushed the axe into Mel's hands again. Mel had just finished eating. "You seem fond of this. After we've gotten food, you'll use it according to its true purpose."

  Meliora nodded. She would chop wood. She must pay Stella. Neither in Lucasta nor in the fairytales and wonderful experiences did you get clothes and food without giving something in return. Meliora would pay with work. She had money, but Stella wouldn't take it.

  "What use is your little bit of plastic to me?" she laughed. She didn't have a bankstat here. So, a person could not do everything that the machines could do. Stella could cook and make tea and medicine for Mel's mom, but she couldn't take money from Mel's money card.

  Mom was still lying in the bed. At least she'd opened her eyes once before Mel had left the room and smiled, recognizing her. Mel had given her soup and a piece of brown, lumpy bread from the witch, together with more powdered medicine and strange tea with grass and flowers in it.

  The path of dirt wound among the trees. Mel wasn't as hot here as she'd been during yesterday's walk through the grass with Mom. The trees filtered the rays of the strong, non-brightlights sun, and they didn't sting as much as in the open. Mel's face had been tingling since yesterday. Stella said this was sunburn and that Mel should stop scratching it, and that it could be alleviated later with a paste.

  Mel didn't know about a paste, but she certainly needed a bath. She kept thinking of this all the way.

  Then, when she and the witch finally reached their destination, Meliora knew that no matter how much she bathed in her life from now on, she'd never, ever be clean again.

  Out there at the end of the path, there was a pit. In the pit, there were two small animals. Not birds—if they had been birds, they could have spread their wings and flown away. No, those had four legs, like cats, dogs, or sheep. Mel knew them from the feeds and Doctor Eryn's lessons about farms.

  "Here is what a rabbit used to look like," Doctor Eryn had said, "long ago, when there were still rabbits in the cities. This is what, if we grew a whole animal out of the rabbit cells we have preserved in our banks of animal cells and genes, the animal would look like. You might know it better under the name bunny. You might have even had a toy bunny as a child. We don't grow rabbits any more. We only grow rabbitlike, for food."

  This in the pit wasn't rabbitlike. The two frightened creatures were darting madly back and forth in their prison, trampling the fresh, sweet-smelling dirt and the grass and thin green branches that had fallen into the prison with them.

  Meliora had read about traps in the old feeds. Sometimes, the enemies who watched your every step would use them.

  "No!" Mel screamed when she saw Stella bend and grab two stones in her hands. "No, don't, we are not their enemies! I am not their enemy!"

  Enemies could kill you. It was like dying, but someone else did it to you.

  The witch threw the two stones into the pit, swiftly. Unlike many Lucastan children playing ball games, she didn't miss.

  "I am glad to hear that you aren't their enemy," the witch said. "We would have a problem if you were. They are not dead yet, girl. Go in now. Go get them."

  Meliora climbed down the pit. It was shallow enough for a young, fit Lucastan to get in and out easily. The rabbits were like two warm, soft balls pressed between her arms and chest. She'd never touched anything like them.

  The witch reached out. One of her hands held a knife. A moment later, a red line appeared on the neck of the first rabbit. Redness trickled down the soft fur and Meliora's fingers. Another smell joined the fresh scent of the forest air—something like wet metal and gagging sweetness.

  "Your turn."

  The red-drenched rabbit was in the witch's hands now, the knife in Meliora's. Meliora stared at it and yet she could not quite see it, could not quite recall how the exchange had been made. Strangely, her hands weren't trembling.

  She could refuse. She could turn and walk away, or even raise that knife and thrust it into the witch's chest.

  She knew she wouldn't. She knew that the witch knew this, too.

  "If you wait a little longer," the witch said, so quietly that Mel had to strain to hear her, "it will wake up. I didn't hit it so strongly with the stone. The impact was just enough to knock it out so that it suffers less when..." The witch shrugged and grew silent.

  "When I kill it," Meliora said, her voice loud and clear. "When I send it away so that we can use the body for food. You can't get to the farms, can you. Just like you and I and Mom can't get to Lucasta. The cities and farms—and their ways of doing things—are beyond our reach now. The way of nature is all we have now."

  She slid the knife along the rabbit's throat as she'd seen the witch do. It didn't even wake up. Its tiny eyelids flickered but didn't open as its tiny body convulsed in her arms—once, twice. Then it was still.

  Slowly, carefully, Meliora laid it on the grass and caressed its head, then looked away.

  "We are not done," the witch said. "You can't look away yet."

  No, and there was no use, anyway. The red ribbon across the soft white neck, the trickling liquid, the closed eyes and those long, still ears—she'd see them everywhere from now on. Everywhere she looked. She might as well look where she should and finish the job.

  The witch made her carry both rabbits to the cottage, then showed her how to skin them, dress them, wash them, cut them. She showed her how to make stew in a clay pot and cook it in the furnace, and had her feed Mom with it when Mom woke up. Mom smiled and said the stew was delicious.

  "Rabbitlike, isn't it?" She fell asleep before Mel could answer.

  The witch sent Mel out to chop wood.

  "I will do anything for her," Mel said softly when, heaving and sweating, she was back in Stella's kitchen. "Anything at all."

  "The romantic vision of a self-sacrificing hero," Stella said matter-of-factly. She was grinding grass and leaves in a bowl again and didn't even look up from her work.

  "It is convenient, girl, to think like this. It is as good an excuse as any for all kinds of deeds—a better excuse than most." Now she looked at Mel with those sunken eyes of hers. "The sooner you drop that excuse, the better. Romance is a pretty trinket, and so is sacrifice, and a young girl might want to adorn herself now and then—as long as she knows, as long as she remembers—that out here all that she does, she does for her own survival first."

  Meliora turned to the side. She vomited. The witch made her clean it up.

  "No cleaningstat here, I am sure you know this already."

  Then she made her wash her and Mom's own clothes in the river.

  "We'll harvest wheat tomorrow. Bread does not pop up into existence by itself, either."

  Finally, the witch made her eat. She pushed a bowl of rabbitlike to her, then sighed and took it away and g
ave her bread. "One by one, all right. Step by step. You don't have to eat it today. As long as you know that you will eat it eventually. Indeed, Meliora, you did well with the rabbits. People before you have fainted and refused to take their turn. Some have whined how they must be fed without dirtying their own hands, as if the world owed them something. Yet others did the deed and then promptly forgot it."

  I wish I could forget, Mel wanted to say. She didn't.

  "Tell me about sickness, Stella," she said instead. "Most of all, tell me how to cure young age."

  The witch looked at her strangely for a moment. The doctors looked at ACD children like this—and at unnaturals—before they gave them cures.

  "Some day," the witch said. "Some day you will know exactly what it takes to cure young age." She sighed and suddenly looked as tired as Mel herself. "As for sickness, I will tell you about it tomorrow. Go to sleep now."

  ***

  Mom woke up the next morning and stayed awake. She was still too weak to walk outside or work much, but at least she was herself.

  Mel didn't tell her about the rabbits. Neither did she tell her that bread, before it became bread, was a grass that was cut with a scythe, then dried, then beaten until grains fell from it. The grains were crushed, mixed with water, left to sour, mixed with more powder and baked.

  Mel and the witch did the cutting of wheat with a scythe that day, then made bread with powder—flour—from last year's grains.

  While they cut the grass, they saw a snake—a real one. It wasn't biting its tail, and the witch gripped Mel's shoulder the moment she saw it.

  "That one's venomous," Stella whispered. "Most of them are, these days. Once upon a time they weren't. They didn't attack people so much, either. Stay still. This one won't attack if you stay still."

  They stood for what felt like hours, until the creature slithered away.

  "Phew." Stella sighed. "Its venom is a good medicine for some ailments. I have some stored."

  Mel realized the witch was sweating. So was she. Even the birds must have quieted while the snake was here, for now they seemed to be singing stronger. Small birds, big birds, red ones, blue, even a bird flying so high, high in the sky that Mel could neither see its color nor hear its song.

  The witch noticed Mel's gaze follow the bird's flight.

  "Back to work, girl," she snapped. "We've a lot to do today."

  "But, Stella, I have seen snakes before, in a picture. They..."

  "Back to work, I said!"

  Mom helped with the bread. She seemed to enjoy the flour and doing something with her hands. Meliora was worried that Mom would fidget when she became better, that she would miss the interweb. But bread was good.

  Bread would be especially good for you when the snow came, the witch said. Bread, and dried fruit—and no, fruit wouldn't last a whole month without being dried first.

  Mel couldn't imagine snow. The witch explained, but Mel felt that, like the waterfall, this was something you must see with your own eyes and feel with your own skin.

  Mel confronted the witch when Mom had fallen asleep again. The witch was about to take her to what she called a cave behind the waterfall, to do work yet again.

  "You said you would tell me about sickness today. Yet, all day you have kept me busy and talked to me of other things. Tell me now, though I think I know a little already. We have no sickness in Lucasta because we have no trees that bear fruit, no wheat, no waterfalls, rivers, or snows, is that so? Because, except for cats and dogs, we don't have four-legged animals—and because we have no honeybees to buzz in the parks, and we only have a few types of birds. We don't have grass taller than our knees, we don't have dead trees or fire."

  "And you—they, girl—don't even have a real sun and moon, and the very air they breathe is different. And of course, there is the genetic manipulation."

  "Generation after generation, sample after sample, pinpointing the bad genes and discarding them, replacing them with something better."

  "In the cities. Out here..." The witch shrugged. "The outside world has had its share of manipulation. Before those cities even existed. Thousands of years ago, it was... But the world of now is the world we have. The world we must deal with. You seem to know about genetic manipulation, Meliora."

  "I have seen it."

  Stella shrugged. "You might know more about it than I do, then. I was just a Doctor of People in Aetna, a long time ago."

  "Aetna! One of those cities—"

  "One of the cities that don't exist any more. Yes."

  "Disease took it away, didn't it," Mel whispered.

  "Disease? Ah." Stella smiled, a sad smile. "Perhaps. In a way. Who knows."

  "And you—how did you—"

  "I ran away. Just like you, when Aetna was still a thriving place. I didn't see it fall, girl, go ask someone else about this."

  "I didn't leave just so that I would ask how Aetna fell," Meliora said quietly. "Tell me about the cure for young age."

  The witch started laughing.

  "Tell me, gods-damn you, what did you do! How did you save yourself!"

  "In the obvious way, girl—I never had the treatment. Sorry to disappoint you. I've never had a reason to seek what you're seeking."

  "You don't know." Mel could say nothing more. The words were stuck in her throat—perhaps because she had bitten her lip so hard that it was bleeding.

  "Meliora, daughter of Lucasta, child of fairy tales and wonderful experiences—did you think that you'd find your answers in the first place you looked? Did you think that this—any of this—would be easy?"

  "You don't know." Those seemed the only words she could say. "You have taught me a whole lot of useless things, but you can't teach me the knowledge I am seeking to learn! Damn you!"

  "What is going on here, Mel? I thought I was dreaming, but—you weren't really shouting, were you?" Mom came into the kitchen, staring at Mel for a long time, for Mom.

  "It is all right, Mom," Mel tried to say, but couldn't.

  "What is going on here, Erika," Stella said, but she was looking not at Mom but at Mel, "is that Meliora doesn't consider my teachings useful. In this case, I shouldn't waste her time any more with them, right? I'll give you food, a rope, and a sharp axe—you have earned that much with your work—and then, tomorrow, you must leave my home."

  "You must give me something else, too." Meliora glared at the witch. She didn't need to stay. She didn't care to stay! She'd stayed for too long at another place where they wouldn't give her the right answers. "You must at least tell me how to get to the City of Life, or you wouldn't be the One Who Shows the Way."

  The Way

  The air was mobile and fitful, yet it was heavy with the smell of the river and that of the green-brown sleazy things on the surface. The river was nothing like the one by the witch's home.

  There, the river had been small, fast, its water curly with waves, sprinkled with the white foam carried from the waterfall. It had grown after that. Other rivers had come and blended into it like new genes into a vial—only, they hadn't improved anything. The river grew and spread and slowed, and the banks became muddy. Strange creatures swam in it, and others crawled in the mud and the tall grass beyond the mud, scuttling away the moment they heard Mel's and Mom's steps.

  Stella had told Meliora to be careful.

  "My home is in a special place," she'd said. "Out there..." She'd shrugged again. "Between here and that City of Life of yours... You might be all right if you follow the path. Don't stray. Or the river—the river is certainly a safer place—but you can't swim, can you?"

  At least they had found the path; several times Mel had wondered if the witch had lied about it. She'd given her a map, but she'd said that the path wasn't exactly where the map claimed it to be, that the map was old, and that animals changed their paths sometimes.

  Mel and Mom trudged on through the grass and the stinking air, Mel holding Mom, almost carrying her.

  "Mel, you and I have had a great adventure,
but it is now time I went to my Julian."

  Meliora jumped at the sound of the voice, though it was a small voice, barely distinguishable amid the ruckus the crawlers in the mud and the birds in the river were making.

  Mom hadn't talked since that time hours ago when they had sat on a rock and eaten the last piece of bread. They had finished the food and water too quickly, Mel now knew. They hadn't known to save for later. The witch did know. Even animals did. Mel had watched the ants down there by the forest beside the witch's small river.

  "An adventure seems different when you read about it in a fairytale," Mel said as an answer to Mom. She ignored the Julian part, just like she had so many times now—once every fifteen minutes or so in the past several hours.

  "Different? How so, Mel?" Mom squeezed her eyes halfway shut, watching the sun's reflection on the river. "It is not different, Mel. Grass, stench, dirt, dust and pain, and no medstat to help you—adventure has always been like this, both in the fairytales and wonderful experiences. And monsters. Yes, monsters, too, look at how interesting that one over there is. Such beautiful colors."

  Mom took a step towards what Meliora had thought to be a fallen tree.

  The fallen tree moved. It writhed on the ground, a triangular head emerging at the side of a long body at least fifteen feet long. It had no feet, but it had fangs. And yes, its colors were beautiful.

  They blurred into an indistinguishable palette as the creature torpedoed towards Mom.

  Mom screamed. Mel thought she screamed, too, but heard nothing of her own voice.

  All she heard was the "thud, thud, thud" inside her ears and inside her head. All she saw was Mom's still, crumpled form in the grass as she shoved Mom away and took her place.

  Mel swung with the axe, and the creature leaped to the side. For a moment it stood still. Its eyes were yellow and oval. They watched too smartly, too differently from those of a sheep. The monster was swinging its tail, giving out a nasty rattling sound. Then it charged.

  Mel swung with the axe again. Hit with the sharp part, aim for the neck, aim for a red ribbon.