by Eden Wolfe
Gale took a slow step backward. She had witnessed Ariane in dark moments, but never before had it been directed at her. But then again, Ariane had never thought Gale might turn against her.
Maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s genuinely innocent to the truth of what happens among the peoples of Lower Earth. But when she finds out about the incubates… the mass execution, the young blood shed on my command…
“I see now that this is not the time for such a discussion.” Gale swallowed hard, “I see that you need some time alone. I will wait for you in the fortress.” Gale turned to leave and then looked back. She bowed, “My Queen.”
A small gasp escaped Ariane’s lips. It was as if she saw something physical growing between them. A first doubt that started a field of thorns. A crevice that would widen.
Weren’t we just a moment ago enjoying the most serene simplicity? Is there nothing I can say to make those moments of suspended dream last forever? A little more time to dwell in the light of love and midday sunshine?
But the moment was already gone, and so was Gale. She walked across the expanse, over to the next hill behind the fortress. The clouds within Ariane darkened just as a gust of wind blew from the eastern shores.
Gale’s hair blew from underneath, creating a tornado of tresses around her.
Ariane’s eyes went black. She saw Gale, her hair morphing into serpents and daggers. They danced around Gale’s head, mocking, laughing. Ariane’s heart raced as images from her nightmares lived before her eyes. Gale’s hair rose, shifting into flames, red-hot knives bursting out from her as she walked away. Ariane had to stop Gale before her change was complete, before Ariane would have no choice but to eliminate her completely.
Stop, Gale, you have to stop!
But no words came out of Ariane’s mouth.
Gale…
The voices came up from within.
“Such obsession. You’ve allowed yourself to be distracted from her true nature. And for what?”
“Why do you seek such love from her? Look at her now, evil wrangling its way from her mind. And you sought her love?”
“How can she love you? She doesn’t know what lies inside you.”
“And if she did, she wouldn’t love you.”
“Sister-slayer.”
“Mother-killer.”
“What did you expect from her? She is like all the rest. Your perfect woman is but a shadow of all those we trusted in the times of Before.”
“What is this obsession with love?”
“It is most unbecoming of you.”
“It will destroy us all.”
“And you should know better than to ask for it. The answer will never satisfy you.”
Ariane blinked, trying to focus on the reality before her and not the one painted by the voices. “Gale, stop…”
The words came out of Ariane as a whisper, but Gale seemed to hear. She turned.
All things were twisted now in Ariane’s eyes.
Gale. A woman. A woman like all the rest. A woman who lives for herself, like the rest of them. We are all a single phoenix rising from the old world. She is no more or less than anyone else. And if she must rise above me, she will.
“You have understood,” a voice inside her chided. “Love of Queen in this world means love of one’s own image. It was designed as such. She knows something of who you are. And what will she do with that knowledge? She will do like the rest of them, if she feels she must.”
I must not let myself be captivated by her.
The wind calmed and with it, Gale’s hair retook its place, cascading down her shoulders. No menace, no threat. Just gentle Gale standing in the distance, her head tilted to the side.
How can I be so naïve to believe that love can endure any longer than the moments in which we sit in the sun? Her love is meaningless.
Ariane heard the words in her head, but she couldn’t believe them.
The wisdom of the voices clashed with their self-serving character. It would take a long time for Ariane to understand their purpose, if she could ever understand it at all. There had been a time she thought she knew everything, but then… how quickly it had all changed.
“My Queen,” Gale whispered from the next hill, knowing Ariane could hear her. “I see you. As you are. And you are strong. You have everything within you. You don’t need the voices.”
Faster than they came the voices were gone.
She watched Gale’s face soften from concern, to question, to invitation.
“Come to me, my Queen. Let me comfort you.”
Ariane didn’t think, she ran. With the flap of a bird’s wing she was at Gale’s side. The warmth emanating off Gale’s body was a blanket of relief, even if the voices were never far away.
“My Queen,” Gale took Ariane’s cheeks in her hands. “Is it the voices again? Don’t listen to them. They mislead you. I am real, I am standing right here, and I’m not leaving you. Is that what they told you this time? Don’t believe them. Look at me. I am right here.”
Ariane let her eyes close. The words that floated from Gale’s lips consumed her. When she opened them, she saw in Gale’s eyes a gentle glaze across the green, emotion in waves of light.
So raw, so real.
“I should have stayed in my place, Ariane. The decisions of this world are yours alone to make. And as for the love I have for you…”
“Stop,” Ariane whispered, though she didn’t mean it.
Gale kneeled before her. “You have been so hurt, my Queen. I cannot know all that you have survived, but I see how it tears away at you, how the voices play on your single weakness.”
Ariane winced.
“But, my Queen, do not doubt it. You have my love.”
Ariane flushed, silently begging for everything to pause. That the warmth of Gale’s forehead against her hand would last. That the calmed wind would stay at bay. That the market below would be silenced. Anything to keep feeling this a little bit longer.
“And you have mine.” She wasn’t sure she’d spoken the words aloud. The sound of her voice was stifled among her rushing blood, her beating heart, and a resounding sense of doubt pounding at her skull.
Gale’s eyes sparkled in the sunshine, but Ariane saw something else in them.
“You are safe with me, Ariane. I don’t know what it will take for you to believe that.”
“Stop,” Ariane tried to whisper, “Just stop there. Or else it will fade…”
“You have my love as a friend,” Gale’s hold on her hand tightened. “Even if I cannot be your equal.”
Stop. Stop. Stop.
But Ariane had no voice.
“I love you as your subject, as a woman dedicated to making our world as the settlers always wanted.”
Stop.
“I am as dedicated to you as the most dedicated woman in Lower Earth. I love you as my queen, Ariane, I love you as a sister…”
“A sister?” Ariane’s head snapped upright. “You love me as a sister?” Flurries of memory flew in the tempest of Ariane’s mind, the sound of the word creating a hurricane of old hate. “What do you know about sisters? You know nothing of the word, of ancestry, of common blood tying you together in a noose.”
Ariane tried to calm herself. She looked down towards the capital. People like ants crawled over each other in the afternoon market.
“I should have known better.” Ariane’s gut twisted, “Certainly, you love me as you can. Or as you would. For as long as you can, of course. It was my fault for asking. Now go, think on your beloved deviants and the incubates and whatever others you deem unfortunate and suffering. Don’t ask about what I have lived; you couldn’t understand it if you wanted. Just be gone, out of my sight. I must attend to the rest of the world.”
Ariane tried to leave, but she was held in place. Gale had to know better.
“And do not speak to me of ‘sister’ as though it is a blessing.” She heard Gale’s breath shallow, watched as her face flustered. “We must be our o
wn women, standing on our feet and crying to the Queens of Before with our own voice. This is what the deviants cannot understand, what the incubates lost in their divergence. You, who has so much empathy for them, your sisterhood is but a mask. A sister is heavy with blood and history and hate.”
Gale’s eyes were wide, “I didn’t mean…”
Ariane spat at the ground between her and Gale.
She turned, trying to walk away, trying to control her steps, trying to exude grace and determination and royal righteousness. But her body would not obey.
Sister…
She ran.
The screeching of the voices rose to new heights, squeals of warning and delight at their validation. Swirling images floated across her eyes, images of blood and birth and mother and memories that belonged to the others. Memories where she didn’t exist at all. If only she could forget. If only she could never again be haunted by the notion of sister.
“Sister! You heard her!”
“You’ve always known you can’t trust anyone!”
“And certainly no one who dares to call you sister!”
Their words echoed in deafening octaves as Ariane ran her pilgrimage north. The call was too strong. She had been too weak. Her feet were taking her to Rainfields, and she could do nothing but obey.
LATER THAT YEAR
2
Gillian
The pigs were climbing over each other as they awaited Gillian’s arrival at the pen. The buckets of slop were heavier than Gillian ever remembered. It felt like her arms were being pulled out of their sockets. The day had been too long already in the fields, but the pigs weren’t going to feed themselves. She turned over the buckets and the beasts were in heaven, oinking and sloshing the food around the trough and the ground, slop all over their faces.
Gillian wondered if they knew that one day they’d be the ones in the slop.
She pulled her long brown hair back into a ponytail. It reached the small of her back. It wasn’t practical for farm work, so her housemother, Agra of the second line, had said time and time again, but that was exactly why she liked it. Gillian wouldn’t dare speak out against Agra, but no one could tell her how long to keep her hair. She had a right to it. It was one of the few things she had a right to, and Gillian knew it. She’d give up practicality just for the sake of feeling the hair down her back tickling her shoulders and reminding her that something was her own.
She relished it all the more so because it might not last long. She was seventeen already. She could be called into the Willing Woman program at any time. At that point, her body wouldn’t be her own anymore. She’d already seen it several times over with house sisters who had gone off at seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen, never to return. They weren’t expected back. To be a Willing Woman meant following the Directive of the day, wherever it might lead.
Gillian was lost in thoughts of the Willing Woman program, swinging the empty bucket towards the main house, when a figure standing along the entryway caught her eye. It wasn’t time for any of the others to be coming home. The little ones were still in Basics classes and the older ones were out in Corn Field 3. Gillian’s stomach fluttered.
Settlers protect me.
It wouldn’t be the first time a vagrant had wandered into their compound. It was a big problem in the Dark Counties in general, but it seemed especially so near the edges of Longor Town, where she lived. Their compound was the first habited land east of Rainfields. Several types of people came through: travelers and wanderers and those disappeared from the capital city of Geb. Most would stumble in, asking for food or water. Gillian didn’t mind those ones. They at least had enough presence of mind to know they were hungry.
It was the ones who didn’t ask for anything, the silent ones with skin that shone yellow in the sun with sweat and oil and eyes glazed over… those were the ones that scared her. It was like they had left their humanity behind on the lava rocks of Rainfields and were only a shell of a person when they rummaged through the garbage bins of their compound. One had died on their front step. They had found her in the morning, matted hair and barely more than a pile of bones. Gillian had spent two days in bed getting over the sight of the body, imagined images of the dead woman and her own lost brother consumed her, along with an almost deadly fever. The dead woman had happened not long after he had disappeared, presumed dead.
Gillian couldn’t make out much of the figure from where she was. She set the basket down and swallowed hard.
The figure was leaning over the fire, the caldron kept boiling two days of the week so that they could set the decaying meat in it and have stew on Sunday. The tray of birds to be boiled sat beside the cauldron; it wasn’t time yet to cook them, the housemother would have only just set the fire alight. It would take hours before it was ready for the birds.
Gillian watched from afar, trying to work out the right thing to do, but her brain was as frozen as her feet. She watched.
The figure was a woman. Gillian could have guessed as much. She hadn’t seen a man come through in years now. The woman looked from the cauldron to the tray of birds and finally settled her eyes on the birds for a long moment. She reached out and flipped through the pile of them, inspecting their black-feathered bodies.
The Dark Counties was the last stop for the crows who transited through Lower Earth; it was their final resting place. Gillian had never seen one drop from the sky, but she found their bodies when she went to leave feed for the wild horses. The horses drank from a pool towards the north end of her property, so she took whatever scraps were left that didn’t go to the pigs and left them at the water’s edge. It was a treat if she could catch sight of one of the wild horses, however momentarily.
The crows traveled in silent packs but died alone. She found them normally just past the gum tree, as though they’d started to fly off the branches and died before they made it to their next destination. Gillian didn’t know why that tree was so popular as a last destination, except that it had beautiful flowers in summertime.
The woman’s fingers grabbed at a big crow and tossed its body back and forth. She seemed to be weighing it, switching it from one hand to the other while looking off past the house.
Gillian looked around, hoping to see Agra emerge from the house, but she didn’t. Mother had been ill, one of the regular weakening viruses, and was likely back in bed after getting the young ones out to classes. She hadn’t been able to work the farm for a couple of weeks.
The woman opened a satchel that Gillian hadn’t seen hanging from her shoulder. She stuffed two of the smaller crows in it, and then pulled something shiny from her pocket. It didn’t look like a knife, but the woman used it to split open the body of the big bird.
Gillian should have shouted. This woman was stealing the food that was supposed to keep them going for the week. The crops had mandatory countings and they hadn’t been able to make the full amount for at least two months. They were relying on those birds as their primary sustenance.
But Gillian’s voice stuck in her throat.
With the body of the crow split open, the woman brought her face down to her hands. Gillian couldn’t tell what she was doing.
Is she eating the bird? It’s not cooked; I collected that one two days ago. Even with pre-stewing refrigeration, it’s not fresh.
“Hey,” Gillian called out, “We’re going to cook that. You should eat it after it’s cooked.”
The woman’s face didn’t lift. It stayed buried in the bird’s gut. Gillian stepped closer; the sounds of slurping made her cringe.
“Did you hear me?” she tried again. “I can cook it for you. It’s not clean.”
The woman looked up. “I haven’t eaten in days.”
“I can cook it for you.”
“I have to eat now. You won’t let me stay.”
“You can wash up, if you like. We have an outdoor sanitary station.”
“You don’t want me here.”
Gillian wasn’t about to say otherwise, b
ut something in the woman’s eyes made her even more cautious. This woman hadn’t completely lost her wits like some of the others who came through, but just the same, something wasn’t right with her.
“Why don’t you go ahead to the sanitaries, and I’ll cook the bird for you. You can take it with you then.”
The woman paused for a moment and then set the bird down.
“Alright. Show me your sanitaries.”
Gillian turned and walked slowly, allowing the woman to catch up without letting her get too close. She walked around behind the house, back to the second barn, to where the structure was set up for the necessaries. Gillian checked that the shower bucket was full and the compost toilet prepped. The woman stood at the door of the wooden structure.
“This is how you live here?”
Gillian looked around. “We’re pretty lucky to have all this land. Not all the house families do.”
“You piss in a pile of hay?”
“It’s compost. We don’t waste water. It’s punishable.”
“Punishable. To piss in a toilet.”
“This is still a toilet,” Gillian felt embarrassed, without knowing why. The stench of the woman was powerful, a mix of sweat and mildew, and something else she couldn’t place. “I’ll get you a towel. The one for the children is still pretty clean.”
Gillian walked out of the sanitaries, her blood pumping in her head and tingling through her fingers and toes. She found the children’s towel hanging on the line and brought it back over.
But the woman was gone.
Gillian looked in the shower and then the toilet area, but she wasn’t there.
With a grunt, a hand grabbed her chin from behind and she felt something cold against her neck. It had to be metal the woman used to cut the bird. Gillian stood as still as she could, bumps rising across her skin. The woman’s heavy breathing behind her was hot and sickly smelling.
“You’re going to tell them I was here.”
“I’m not,” Gillian didn’t know who the woman meant.
