by Eden Wolfe
A longing so fulfilled that at last the sounds of their brains dulled in quiet comfort.
They did not breathe.
Legs over waists, arms around necks and ribs, and faces pressed skull to cheek to chin. They laid in silence, neural firing slowed to glacial melts, neither was ready to consider any more than this moment and their shared reality. A single lifeline made twice over. Perfection, twice, in their haunted world. They understood now why they had never felt completely alone. They clung to each other willing again for life to begin. An urge so early, so strong, it overcame them, and they lay like this long after the night sky tore the wild day away. Each felt the movements deep inside the other. Even the voices they each had inside, the old voices of generations past, always disruptive, calmed in shock.
Aria, scar deep inside her, felt it throbbing. “Training is insufficient for this circumstance."
"Indeed." Ariane took a deep breath.
They shared this breath; the gentle breeze of the other caressed her face and it was too familiar, as though it was her own.
"I think I felt you, it must have been you."
"I, too, had those moments."
They actively sought those memories from when they had felt a wave of something, a vibration of electricity. Those moments when they turned expecting to see someone, but no one was there. The changes inside themselves that they had not commanded.
The other looked at her, head shaking slowly. "To even be given the same name. It’s almost perverse."
"I had always believed the name Aria was out of affection, but now - now I know what stands behind the name."
"Aria." Ariane moved the word, this name, around her mouth. "No one ever called Ariane anything other than Ariane."
Ariane. Aria. This and the scar were the only discernible differences between them.
"Where were you, Aria?"
"East Gana."
"Aria of East Gana. How comfortable you must have been. How privileged in your seaside paradise.”
Aria tried to read the spite in Ariane’s tone but she did not have enough information to make meaning of it. “Where were you?
“Me? I was in West Strangelands."
Aria tilted her head. West Strangelands was as far as the terrain habitably extended. Called Strangelands for the darkness that set in from the high caves, glacier topped, where twilight lasted for hours and very little had ever been able to grow since the Mist settled. And too close to Rainfields. It was far, literally and figuratively, from her life in Gana.
"How are your wounds?"
"Healing,” Ariane’s shoulders relaxed. “They had been numerous but only a slight graze of the heart. The lungs had the greatest injury. You?"
Aria lifted her shirt and turned, evidence of the deep wound. "The primary remains thick with scar tissue. Several of the others were deep enough to kill. I should have died. I, too, was saved."
"But by who? This is mad. That you are here before my eyes is mad. Am I mad? Are we mad?"
"No.” Aria lifted her chin. “We are a genetic experiment."
Ariane shook her head. "Lucius must be involved."
"He must be."
"And what now of us?"
In this new reality, they were not one Future Queen Ariane: inheritor of the throne, Future of the Nation, raising the land to renewal from the generations of despair since earth crumbled and boiled under man's feet.
The future of Lower Earth, the birth of generations in waiting, sat on the shoulders of the royalty. The royalty had been the driving force of society, seeing the people of Lower Earth regrow, replenish, become stronger and more resistant. Here the Future Queen was the symbol of all that was to come, of all that could be achieved, of the direction of humanity, where every child's face reflected aspects of the Future Queen's own image.
The generations who fought against all the elements to survive, who had relied on the natural royalty to maintain the world in peace, to find ways to rebirth society, they would look to Ariane for resolution.
Ariane, the Future.
Ariane, their Hopes Embodied.
Ariane, their Leader.
They were now two. Two genetically identical selves.
In a world where there was only one Queen.
47
The huntress
Leaves stirred as footsteps gently swept the forest bed.
It was a movement as slow as the turning earth, invisible in the black of night. Using sensations and sounds that reached deep into the woods, she sought the two, hunting, knowing their scent, not knowing if they still lived. She swept across the distance seeking out signs of the code she knew so well. Hunting the sequence written through her own blood. She could not tell if they were alive or dead and the forest gave no sign. Scent and sight failed to uncover an answer.
The huntress turned homeward to report.
The Queen would be waiting for her.
48
Aria
They did not rest. They waited. All motion was on pause, but at the ready. They did not know their hunter and couldn’t anticipate the next step.
"We can assume they believe us dead."
"That is the greater likelihood."
"A silent unknown death."
"That is most likely."
“What would have been your next step had I not been here?”
Aria ran the scenario in her mind. "The city. I would go to Geb."
"As would I. In hiding."
"Yes."
"Do you know Geb?"
“I was never permitted.”
“Nor was I.”
They processed the consequences, the unknowns, and the taste of shame at their ignorance. They sensed the determination in each other.
"Geb will be the seat of change."
"Yes. The priestesses of Gana have no more desire for independence. Not since the death of Habana."
Ariane's eyes were set in the distance. "They cannot possibly know we are two."
"The Queen would not have taken such a step as to divide us if our double birth was known."
"The Queen knows all, I am sure of it."
"The Queen," Aria stopped. "You are close to her?”
Ariane responded without hesitation, "No."
"Nor am I."
"I was close to no one."
“No one?
“It was my preparation. Solitude. My relationship to the land first. Second, to the people as a force for progress. The relationships would be built once I was seated as Queen. No one was to know me until then. For only the purest of relationships. The Queen rarely came. The only one who ever came was-"
"Archer?"
"Yes. Archer."
They sat in silence.
"Archer is across all my memories."
"And mine."
"I outgrew him."
"A long time ago."
"But there was an affinity."
"I felt it too. Can you name it?"
Aria paused. She could not. Several times she had considered it, this strange relationship with a man who came by choice and without reason. A pull between them. The voices had always stirred at his arrival but made no sound. He came regularly and without cause.
"He tried to be a father."
"He did."
"So Archer knows about us."
"And Irene?"
"The Commandante? Difficult to say. She avoids the priestesses."
"But she is a born Ganese."
"She is, but she left their ways behind long ago."
"So you know her well."
"No one knows her well. Habana knew her. Though I was always close to her genetic copy."
Ariane paused. "The Commandante has genetic copy? But the priestesses do not allow it."
"They didn't allow it for a very long time. But Irene made a strong case with Habana. Improved reproduction processes. More advanced techniques used in Geb applied to the Ganese and so on. So far there is only one, and it is of Irene, though in heart they seem quite differe
nt." Aria's eyes relaxed, "Leadon. Her name is Leadon. And she is nothing like the Commandante.”
"They started with the Commandante?"
"It was the most logical."
"You had no threat from her, Irene's kin?"
"From Leadon? No, not at all. They aren’t even kin. Irene gave her code, but nothing more. She doesn’t even acknowledge Leadon. The Commandante’s ways come from training. From experience. Not from blood. Leadon and I have been close since early childhood. We met not long after I was born and had much in common, being outsiders in Gana.”
"We were born."
She paused. "Yes."
"I only had the Rainfields." Ariane looked away.
Aria felt a coolness down her spine. The sounds of Rainfields had rumbled in her for as long as her memory went.
"Rainfields," Aria whispered, memories of nightmares rushing through, "Do they still call you?"
"I hear them, but they do not call me as they call the Queen."
“They call the Queen?”
“I know it too well that they do. She is weaker than me. Than us.”
Without speaking, Aria heard the heart quicken in the self across from her. She knew. She too felt it but could suppress the call, push it down with the other voices who threatened control, but who couldn’t take her over.
"We are a stronger design than her."
Ariane looked at Aria, "Yes. But there are mysteries in her that I cannot explain."
Aria saw a flash of Ariane's memory. Small visions she knew weren't her own. But she didn't know how to explore them.
Head touching Queen’s. Screaming. Beating. Stone walls. Fierce woman. Concrete floor.
"We leave at sundown." Ariane broke Aria's concentration. "Are you healed?"
"Sufficiently."
They held their eyes on each other and together turned to look off towards Geb in the distance. They calculated the voyage and threats, obstacles, and directions.
And they did it with duplicity of thought.
They were on the move. Aria's breathing was shorter than it should have been. Her ability to control her functioning was more limited than usual. They passed through miles of forest and hills. Their arms touched as they sat in the brush.
She had taken no time to consider what it meant, this other person, this other self, now beside her in the fading light of day, as real as she was.
She tried to remember the events that took place during her unconscious period. Every moment came back to her as a quiet hum and nothing more. She could only see it as an underexposed photo. There were vague outlines and she could hear some sounds, but the lull of unconsciousness drove everything else into silence.
Remember. Recall. Where was I before the beach? What chaos, what demon, or friend put me in that place? Put us in that place?
Each attempt to scan through muscle memory fell flat. Neural pathways reached their end. It was the darkness of a pillow covering her face. Even when the memory became clearer, it was all red, like a blanket over her eyes. And there she reached the limit of her access. No more memories to be found.
She grunted in frustration and threw a rock at a tree, denting the trunk. The other understood why.
"My memory is covered in red."
"And mine. I get closer, and then it slides farther away."
They moved in silence but for an occasional exhale at the minor effort to scale trees. They slithered between rock forms, small pauses for fresh water when they came upon it. Their bodies joined in mutual fabric, cut only by space.
They read each other’s move. And they knew it.
Looking to each other, they recognized the shared awareness.
Familiar.
Dusk turned into night, and they moved ahead without pause, until they found themselves on city limits, a question rising in both their heads.
Decision required, they shared the thought.
Ariane spoke through the dark. "Enemies still unknown."
"Likely recognition on arrival in Geb."
"Agreed."
They looked at each other.
Not yet. She said without saying a word.
The other agreed with a nod.
They lowered themselves as rain began to fall.
Aria watched as the other prepared a small space, pushing brush and bush aside for them to hide. She crawled closer, keeping her low position but needing to look at this other again. Closer. The other looked up and they held each other with their eyes.
Remember.
Aria reached out. Her two hands cupped the face of the other-self in her palms. The rain poured down the other's face, through Aria’s fingers, onto the other’s neck. Ariane lifted her hands, hands as though breaking through a mirror, and placed them on Aria’s cheeks. Her skin responded to the coolness of the water, heating in natural reaction, and the mist burned off. It rose into the air.
Aria watched as the face of the other became veiled in the mist. She removed the hands from her face, holding them in her own.
It was like touching her own skin, feeling it as only can be felt when you touch yourself from inside.
They remained kneeling across from each other as the sun set into darkness. The gulls overhead changed course to avoid their tower of steam.
They leaned forward, touching foreheads and the sound erupted between them, pushing breath at the end of their lungs. They sought out the memory, shared memory, turning with breakneck speed to the inside, firing and flaming their way head-first, hurtling into something. Remembering collectively what they could not remember alone.
They grasped each other as the red rose up in color and form.
Red, of soft touch in red, she was red.
She.
She who came when the red of their blood soaked the ground. She breathed life back in. Somewhere, unseen, the coma thus given, thus gifted upon them.
Who is she?
I don't know.
They sought and searched within themselves and each other, embracing head to head, clawing at each other’s memory, tight grip, to find it, run, run, run. Can't stop until it is there, pushing harder, heat boiling in their brains as they look for it, labyrinth of sound and smell buried, they ran the course within their memories, caught in dead ends, a something, a sound, a belief, a truth that -
She is like us.
But there can only be one.
And yet they were three. This duplicity of face and their red sister self, similar but a world different. The one who saved them at the edge of life.
They could not let go, could not let the power of their shared experience be lost.
Seek it!
Find it!
Go farther into it, what comes before?
Who is there?
Ariane's body jerked against her sister-self, the effort greater than shifting boulders. They were in deeper than they had ever demanded of themselves. They trembled against each other, flesh slapping with the movement inside, and they were upon it, so close.
Go, my sister self, stay within, stay with me. Do not shy away.
I am with you, I am here, and I feel you from the inside.
I feel your scar.
I feel your rushing blood.
What do you see behind the red?
What do you see?
They saw frames of memory, moving pictures of complete lives led, and the fear of all that came before and what would come and the moment they hid inside themselves. They saw the moment they hid from their own death, saw it coming, and hid away with only a sliver of hope to one day emerge from it.
There, in that place, it crashed upon them both.
It was him.
They thought it to each other. Pulling slowly apart, they breathed the same word, the same enemy, the same betrayer at once.
"Archer."
49
Aria
The sun was setting on the horizon. Side by side, they entered the city, down the hill in snake slides. Chests flat, they rose at the undocumented and forgotten
gate of Old Geb City. The Geb of the first peoples' day. The stone gate stood against the wind, a searing wind that emerged from the peaks of the Leeside mountain range. The gates were mossed over, a wet surface drawing up from the watershed below. The moisture beaded on the surface, sliding under Ariane's touch. Aria and Ariane looked at each other, the slightest of nods between them before one headed north and the other south.
Northbound, Ariane passed the ruins of the originator's time, long before the Mist. The city of ghosts' way, the superstitious people called it. She stepped through the foundations of a structure, gentle of foot, not letting her weight penetrate the mud. But still walking as the common people walked. Drawing no attention should she be seen out of the corner of someone's eye. This was a time to blend.
Southbound, Aria met the river intake, its wide creek and smoothed stone, the crystals of water shone in the moonlight. All her senses heightened, she sought signs from every direction. She perceived no sound now but her other self; they still had not breached the modern city limits.
She slowed her heartbeat, the sound of it irritating, distracting her from focus. Slowing her breath, she caught the slightest of sounds off in the distance. A stone moved.
Northbound, Ariane heard the stone shift. Someone was walking in their direction, walking towards the old city gate. There would be no reason for this, not at this hour. Miles apart, they each found their cover. One in the river bank, the other in the broken foundations of an old structure.
Humming.
It wasn't recognizable as a tune. Neither could be sure what it was, the voice low and full, a woman. But the song was off-kilter. It rang flat and sideways. Safely distanced from it, the two struggled to keep a hold on the sound. It was disjointed; the sound bubbled through the humming woman's throat.
Northbound, Ariane caught the smallest of sights of the moving figure. Her breath stuck in her chest. The woman’s size was unmistakable, the manlike face and square jaw too memorable. The sweat on the giant woman’s brow, the sneer, the delight, and stench of blood and duty mingled in the night air. Ariane knew exactly who it was. That face had been burned into Ariane's brain. She had come to West Strangelands more than once. Always to take someone away, someone who would never be seen again.
