Under the Empyrean Sky (The Heartland Trilogy)

by Wendig, Chuck

  Or worst, you could end up with the Blight. You get that, nobody will talk to you. They’ll run you out of town on a rail. Maybe even bash you over the head with a shovel and plant your ass in a pocket of dirt somewhere, see if you’ll grow.

  Pop’s eyes narrow. “Cael. Where’s the cat-maran?”

  Cael stalls, kicks a few stones. “Uhh. Took her to Lane’s. Got a crack in the hull. He’s got some mender’s paste. We put Betty up on blocks in his barn.”

  “You should have said something. We have a whole tin of mender’s paste here in the barn.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Cael changes the subject: “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

  Pop works at the local processing facility. Once a teacher of children, now just another cog in the Empyrean machine. Mayor Barnes gave him that job like he gives out all the jobs. The Barnes clan has had it in for the McAvoys for a long time now.

  “Got back an hour ago. Will be heading back there soon.”

  Cael nods.

  Pop sucks air through his teeth.

  Another yawning silence. Another uncomfortable void.

  Pop holds up the rat. “I’m going to go skin this and start on dinner. We got a new box of provisions in from up above—even ended up with a couple of knobby apples and a bundle of worm-eaten collards. Can you head out and milk Nancy?”

  “No.” Cael says the word and realizes too late that it comes out harsh, like a hammer-blow. It’s just that Cael doesn’t want to waste any time. He hurries to say, “I need to get to the Mercado, after I visit with Mom. Can I get Mer to milk the goat?”

  Pop’s smile is sad and strained, but it’s there just the same. “Sure, Cael. Sure.”

  Her room is always kept dim. Curtains drawn so that only a glowing frame of daylight creeps in around the edges. The room smells heady. Verdant. Fungal, even. It doesn’t make sense, really, given that his mother doesn’t suffer from the Blight. Still, when Cael smells the air in her room, he can’t help but think of Pop’s old textbooks, of pictures of faraway jungles and rain forests.

  The first thing he does in the room is listen for her breathing, because he fears that one day he’ll come in and she won’t be breathing at all. (And he hates himself for thinking that day will be a relief, in a way.) But he hears it: a slow, whistling wheeze as she inhales, then a small puff of air as she exhales.

  She’s just a dark shape on the bed. Never moving.

  It’s the tumors, in part. Her whole body is covered with them, and they lie against and atop one another like tar paper shingles on an uneven roof. They remind Cael of calves’ livers. A heaping mess of them. They’re heavy—a burden on skin, muscle, and bone. Because of them, her arms and legs and back have all atrophied. She cannot stand; she can’t even sit up.

  Maybe the tumors are also inside her body and her brain, or maybe the weight of the growths is more than skin-deep. Maybe it pulls on her mind above all else. Maybe there’s not much mind left.

  Cael can’t think about that too long: On the one hand, he hopes her mind is ruined, because then maybe she’s away from the prison that is her body. Trapped in a place of dreams or even nothing… that has to be better than here and now. On the other hand, this is his mother. He can’t abide thinking about her not being in there. Somewhere.

  She knows he’s here, at least. That speaks something for her mind. He knows she knows, because when he sits, she makes a sound—it’s like the way the wind whispers through the corn.

  “Hey, Mom,” he says.

  His mother keens a raspy breath to greet him.

  He goes about the ritual: He’s gotten a short bucket of water from the well-pump outside, and he sets that by the bed. Then he opens the side table drawer and pulls out all the accoutrements. He dampens a hard, dark sponge that softens with water, and he dabs it against the layer of tumors that comprise her brow, washing the top and underside of each. She doesn’t have much regular skin anymore; it’s almost all taken over by the bulging bladder-like tumors.

  When he’s done there, he lifts the flaps from around her eyes and deposits a couple of wetting drops into her eyes. The eyes don’t focus on him, not really; he’s not even sure how good her vision is anymore, what with how the tumors keep her in the dark most times.

  He wets her lips. Cleans her ears. Brushes back her hair. Her hair is the color and consistency of corn silk—thin and soft—and in this light an almost golden green. Her scalp is the one place the tumors never manifested. He doesn’t know why. Nobody does.

  Nobody really seems to know anything anymore. Maybe they never did.

  Normally he’d talk to her. Light, polite conversation: Heard a twister hit Guster’s Grove couple days ago, piss-blizzard’s coming, Lane and Rigo are good, got a portion of squealer meat a few weeks back, Pop’s okay, so’s Mer, got a shuck rat for dinner, everything’s pretty fine, don’t worry one lick about anything. He’d feel like a real monster telling her all the things that are really going on. All the things he’s feeling. Hey, Mom, I know you’re trapped inside that thing you call a body, and while I got you here, maybe I could burden you with my problems? How’s that sound?

  Today, though, he’s got to hurry off. Got to get Mer to milk the goat and then head to market.

  He kisses his mother on her brow, just where the tumors recede—he’s not grossed out by them anymore, but he hopes she still has some sensation left beyond the cancerous margins.

  Cael leaves the room. But then he hears a creak and a squeak—not from the hallway but coming from inside his room. Is Mer in there again? Damnit, Mer.

  He turns heel-to-toe and marches straight into his room. He’s about to start yelling at her to keep the King Hell out of his room—

  A shadow runs fast toward him. A great darkness falls upon him; and before he knows what’s happening, he can’t see anything, and his hands are tangled. He can’t see; he can’t move.

  Cael, whispers a female voice. The Maize Witch has come for your soul.

  And then the darkness is gone again in a rippling flutter of fabric. Gwennie stands before him holding a blanket—his blanket, from his bed, which she clearly has just thrown over his head.

  “Damnit!” he says, and feels the heat in his cheeks. I’m such a damn donkey.

  Gwennie cracks up. When she finds something really funny, she snorts and doubles over, doing this little stompy shuffle with her feet. “I had you going there, didn’t I? I mean, Maize Witch? Seriously?”

  He folds his arms over his chest. Embarrassment bubbles up inside him. A wind blows into the room, and the edges of the blanket in her hand shift and squirm. The window sits open: Gwennie’s entrance point.

  It’s then that he notices her hair. She has pale cheeks, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, hair like strawberry water. But her hair is done up—nothing pretentious or showy, not in an Empyrean way or anything, but braided and then wound in a circle, as though it were a wreath of laurels. Like the Lady wore when she was Obligated to the Lord in all the old stories.

  “Stupid, isn’t it?” She picks at her hair like she’s looking for bugs in it.

  He swats at her hand. “Quit. You’re gonna mess it all up.”

  “Oh? You like it?”

  “I might.” Another blush rises to his cheeks.

  “Captain, are you coming on to me?”

  “I…”

  “Do the others know?” she always asks.

  “They do not.”

  “Good.” She laughs then—this time no snort but a happy giggle that calls to mind porch chimes ringing in a slow breeze—and attacks him. Her mouth finds his and his hands find the small of her back, and they backpedal into the room doing the dance they’ve been doing for months now: a clumsy but earnest tango to which nobody else is privy. They tumble onto the bed, hands and fingers seeking.

  “You messed your hair up,” he says. His head is lying on her breast like it’s a pillow.

  “I didn’t like it anyway.”

  “But that’s the way
you’re supposed to wear it. For tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.” The way she says it is laced with poison. “Hell with tomorrow.”

  “Maybe it’ll all work out.”

  “Maybe it won’t.”

  “Lane says we got about a ten percent chance.”

  Gwennie rubs her eyes. “That means there’s a ninety percent chance it could go the other way.”

  “I didn’t think about that.” He didn’t want to think about that. “What happens then? If that happens, I mean. Not that it’s going to!”

  “You know what happens. It is what it is. We’re already taking a risk doing what we’re doing. If my parents caught us… if the Empyrean caught us? We’d be run out of town on rails.”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “And nobody’s going to.”

  She pulls away from him and sits up on the bed. He plants a hand on the small of her back, a pale expanse that calls to mind a puddle of milk. And then she stands, leaving his hand wanting.

  But something tickles at his brain stem.

  Milk. Milk. Goat’s milk.

  “Aw, shit,” he says, hopping up and then falling back as he trips over his own trousers. He races to get them up on both legs, kicking his feet up in the air like an upside-down weevil. “Gotta milk the goat. Gotta get to the market. Shit, shit, shit.”

  Gwennie pulls on her own trousers and shirt, and shrugs. “Go to it, Captain.”

  “Come with me,” he says.

  “Already late. They’re wanting me to be there so they can fit the dress.” What she means is, I don’t want to get caught.

  “I gotta go,” he says.

  “So do I. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow. And like that she’s out the window. His gaze hangs there a little while longer. For some reason, his heart aches.

  Mer’s room looks like what he figures Guster’s Grove looked like after the twister came through: Her clothes are on the floor, not in the drawer. Her bedsheets are off the cot. A knitted blanket is bundled in the corner. A couple of plastic-headed, fabric-bodied dolls lay arranged in a lascivious position atop the old swampwood dresser.

  And there stands his sister, her dark hair tucked under a broad-brimmed farmer’s hat. She’s shoving clothes into a long canvas bag. Her window is open to the south roof of the house, a breeze blowing in.

  “I heard you two” is the first thing she says, and a blush rises to Cael’s cheeks. He crosses his arms and takes a step backward. That’s Merelda. Good at disarming him. Him and anybody she’s ever met. She doesn’t even look over at him. Just keeps shoving stuff in that bag.

  “You’re running away again,” he says.

  She shrugs. “You weren’t supposed to be home. Pop wasn’t supposed to be home. I thought I had time to just… sneak out.”

  “So don’t go.”

  “I have to.”

  “Shut the hell up. You do not.”

  She spins toward him. “I don’t want to be Obligated. I don’t want to be forced to marry someone I don’t love.”

  “You have a whole year before you’re Obligated, and another year after that until the ceremony makes it official. I’m the one who’s on the hook this year.”

  “And are you happy about it?”

  “No, of course not, I… I—”

  “Then come with me.”

  He scowls. “And leave Pop? And Mom? I don’t know if anybody told you this, but we have responsibilities here, girl. Work. Jobs. Ace notes to keep everybody alive. Pop would say—”

  “I don’t care what Pop says. He doesn’t care about us anymore.”

  “That ain’t true. And stop interrupting me.”

  “Besides,” she says, setting down the bag and walking over to the old oaken rocking chair sitting in the corner of her room. “I have a plan to keep up my end.” She snatches her old teddy bear: a one-eared, button-eyed bear named Mister Shushers, named not on account of the ear but rather because nobody ever seemed to have stitched him a mouth.

  She’s never taken the bear before. She loves that bear.

  “Don’t do this,” he says.

  “Got to.”

  “Damnit, Mer!”

  She hops over to her brother, as light on her feet as a seed puff skipping across the dry earth, and she throws her arms around him. Mer always gives big hugs. Lung-crushers, unexpected for her sprite-like size.

  He feels the warmth of her cheek against his.

  Then she presses a small note into his hand. “A note. Saying bye to you guys. Give it to Pop. If he even cares.”

  “He cares—”

  “Bye-bye, big brother.”

  “Don’t be gone long, sis.”

  To this, she says nothing. Mer goes and grabs her bag, hoisting it over her shoulder. Starts to climb out the window. She waves one last time.

  “Pop’s not gonna be happy,” he says.

  “That’s life in the Heartland.”

  And then she’s gone.

  Pop’s outside by the garage at the stump—the remains of a tree struck by lightning when Cael was very young. Now it’s a kind of butcher’s block. Pop does a lot of cooking right there next to the stump, puts a kettle or a skillet over the fire pit only a few yards off.

  By the time Cael walks up, the old man’s just finished “shucking the shuck rat.” The skin’s off. Next to the grayish-pink carcass sits a little tray of blood, feet, and entrails. Some of that will go into tomorrow night’s soup, and it’s already expected that Cael will have Lane and Rigo come to share in that evening’s meal.

  Cael’s about to hold up the note, tell Pop what his sister did again, when he sees that the two sacks he brought home are sitting on the ground. Empty.

  And just past the stump is an old wooden tray of vegetables.

  All of them cut up. Diced pepper. Chopped tomatoes. Green beans destemmed and broken in two. Cael feels the blood pound at his temples.

  “Lord and Lady, Pop!” he cries out, hands balling into fists. “What did you do?”

  Pop gives him a sideways glance. “Just cooking dinner, son.”

  “The rat, yeah! But those vegetables. I told you not to look in those sacks.”

  “What you told me was that the sacks contained motorvator parts. Which I found curious, what with the way the sacks were not clanking together. Decided I’d take a peek. Discovered that you lied to me and figured that you were just trying to surprise me by bringing home dinner.”

  Cael’s mouth twists up. “That wasn’t what you figured, and you damn well know it. You stole something from me. I was planning on taking that to the Mercado, to the maven—”

  “And then what?” Pop wheels, the skinning knife in his hand. “Get a bundle of ace notes? Live high on the hog for a couple weeks? Maybe rub it in Boyland’s face?” Cael tries to answer, but Pop doesn’t let him. “Food like this isn’t legal, son. And the maven is no friend to the McAvoys. She’s in the mayor’s corner, and you damn well know it. You walk in with a bounty like that, and it’s like handing her a gun. A gun she’ll point at your head and use to take you down, making sure that Boyland Barnes Jr. never has to contend with the likes of the Big Sky Scavengers again.”

  “Just the same, you had no right. No right. That was my choice to make.”

  The tip of the skinning knife punctuates each of his father’s words. “And plainly you are not yet mature enough to make that kind of choice.”

  “You treat us like kids,” Cael says.

  “You and your little sister are kids.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe she feels like you should trust her more, too. And you don’t. Maybe that’s why she ran away again.” And with that Cael flips the note toward his father. It flutters to the ground as Cael storms off.

  He doesn’t bother to see what his father thinks about it.

  At the very edge of the horizon, Cael can see a faint golden hue intruding on the late-afternoon sky. It means one thing: the piss-blizzard is on its way. Maybe it’ll come and swallow Obligation Da
y whole. Gobble it right up.

  Cael is standing out back by the silo when Pop finds him. Staring up at the sky. Watching a pair of Empyrean flotillas way off in the distance pass by each other, silent and steady.

  “She’ll be back,” Pop says, quiet. “She always comes back.”

  “What? That’s it? She’ll be back?”

  “Way I figure it, yes.”

  Maybe the old man is right, Cael thinks. But he’s not so sure. Mer and Pop have been fighting more and more. She stopped showing up at Molly Goggin’s, where she works as a seamstress—a day like today could have earned her more than a few ace notes, what with the Obligation Day dresses needed.

  On the one hand, Cael gets it. If he could run away, he would. But the family has debts. And each member of each family is responsible for carrying that burden. Merelda runs away like that, she’s no longer contributing. She doesn’t want to end up marrying someone she doesn’t love? Doesn’t want to one day end up working in one of the processing facilities? Shit, who does? That’s life in the Heartland. Wish in one cup, piss in the other, see which one fills up first.

  Pop’s brow tightens. The lines across it look like furrowed earth. “I suppose that means Mer didn’t show up at Molly’s again today.” He holds up the note. Peers at it like he’s trying to see something that isn’t there. He pockets it. Adjusts his glasses. Nods as if he’s come to some conclusion. “She’s probably been gone since the morning. Surprised Molly didn’t send someone over to let us know. But she’ll be back. Like I said.”

  “Pop!” His father’s sense of obliviousness when it comes to his sister is bordering on epic. For a moment, all Cael can do is make this stammering sound—“Eh? Whuh? Unh!”—because he can’t even find the words. “You gotta be shitting me, Pop. Mer’s gone. She ran away. Again. That means I gotta work harder. That means you gotta work harder. Never mind the fact she’s not allowed to run away. You don’t get to leave town without an Indulgence. I mean, godsdamn, Pop. Godsdamn!”

  “Cael, watch your language—”

  But Cael’s not even looking at his father now. He’s got his hands up in the air like a pair of startled crows, and he’s pacing back and forth. “Oh, and let’s not forget that tomorrow Proctor Agrasanto’s going to show up here for Obligation Day. I’m sure she’ll be totally fine with Merelda going off the reservation. Mer gets special exceptions from you, so why wouldn’t she get one from her?”