Wixon's Day

by Phil Williams

  Hart says she will go with Marquos, if he will have her aboard. He is more than happy for her company, growing closer to her by the day; she still speaks little, but he notices she is softening, smiling more. He is thankful to have her with him, and finds himself saying so to Teri when he runs into her around the Meth Fields. They join her and her workmates for drinks, and the workers of the Meth Fields join the warriors of the Thesteran Fire in defeating the darkness with drink and joy.

  17

  A dusty street, in a tiered area of the Meth Fields where row upon row of slum housing is piled on shelves running up a hillside. Hart takes Marquos to one of the buildings towards the centre, a mesh of metal and wooden planks nailed into place to form a rough square abode. Marquos asks her to let him go in alone, and she steps away, wishing him good luck. She thinks better of it and gives him a quick kiss of encouragement, then ducks away, averting her nervous eyes. He smiles at the gesture, and turns to the door, taking a deep breath.

  Marquos’ knock is answered by a broad man in filthy white overalls, clothes stained with grease and dark smears of incongruous dirt. The man is larger than the pilot, his face round and puffy, balding, with questioning eyes. He regards Marquos oddly for a moment, running an engine part through his hands with an oily rag, and grunts “What you want?”

  “You’re Red’s father?” Marquos says, more a troubled statement than a question. The man cocks his head to one side and opens his left eye wider as he inspects the pilot. Without warning, he lets out a loud laugh and grins a messy smile, booming “You must be Marqy!”

  “That’s right.”

  “Come in, for Dendra’s sake where are my manners?” the father backs into the house, holding up an arm for Marquos to move by, and the pilot offers one last worried glance back to Hart before entering. The home is dark and dusty, its walls uneven, and the door leads directly into a messy workshop of tools and spare machine parts. Red’s father continues through the workshop to the living area, swinging an inviting arm and guffawing “Can’t believe it, can’t believe he’s turned up! Martha! You’ll never guess who’s here!”

  Marquos apprehensively follows, stepping over the machinery and looking into a bedroom. A messy sprawl of clothing on the floor, a solid bed and little else. He trembles at this squalor.

  “Red! Red guess who’s here!” the father shouts as he wanders into the living room. Marquos pauses as he hears her little voice brightly asking who. He moves through to the living room and sees her sat on the floor, before a set of beaten old sofas, playing with a doll. Beyond the sofas is the mother, Martha, stirring up a stew. The moment Red sees Marquos she cries out in uncontrollable glee, leaping to her feet and running to him. She gives him a tight hug around the legs, and he hugs her back, scarcely able to believe she’s here. She speaks excitedly, “I knew you’d come back! I knew it I knew it I knew it!”, but he can say nothing in response. He opens his mouth but the words catch in his throat. He gives up and just smiles, patting her on the head.

  “Put on a brew for him, Martha!” the father calls out happily, “Let’s get the lad comfortable shall we?”

  As the parents scurry away to attend to their guest, movement across the room catches Marquos’ eye and he sees a familiar face shuffling into the open. Lian is hunched in a doorway, his posture nervous as ever, and he gives the pilot a brief smile, before looking away, afraid to meet his eyes. Marquos mouths, “You?”

  Lian gives a little nod, another smile. His skin is clean and has more colour, his clothes patched up and solid once more. He shuffles a foot and explains simply, “What else could I do?”

  Marquos is given a frenetic account of Red’s time since he last saw her, filled with childish enthusiasm that warms his heart. She tells him of the flight on the gyrocopter and the tracker, who sped over the hills and dodged through the trees with such speed – whoosh! – it was terrifying but so much fun! And he took her by the hand to the mean Mine Guards, saying they would protect her, and she tried to run but the guards caught up to her and she begged and begged but the gyrocopter flew away. She was put into a cage on the back of a trailer, attached to a large rolling thing with chimneys and a steam-engine, and the guards started driving them away over the hill. There were other children in the cage – Tommy, Linny, Milly, Kenly – and they were all very scared, but Red told them about the Mines, and how she had escaped before. But – bang! – there was lots of loud noises and the tree people ran in and had a fight with the mean guards – pow, pow! – until they were all gone and the tree people broke through the cage. They carried the children back into the trees, and back towards their tree-base, where they had a huge fire, one of the biggest fires ever, and lots and lots of food. And the tree people were friends with Mr Gore, and Mr Kand, and they let Red meet their beautiful queen, and she was so beautiful, you would’ve loved her Marquos. You must’ve met her though! Marquos nods, wasn’t she beautiful? Very. And so kind. And they said Marqy had already gone, on a very important mission, but they would take her back to her family at once, and all the other children, they would be taken back to theirs. Mr Kand insisted that he go with her, he wouldn’t let anyone else take charge. He took her the next day, carrying her whenever she got tired, over a beautiful field that was all sparkly when it was wet, and they went to the waterways where they walked by the canal, and they caught a ride on another boat, a big canal boat. Not like the Hippo – where is the Hippo?! – but bigger, red and green, with lots of seats inside, and lots of people. Not very friendly people, probably very tired and not happy to be away from home. But Mr Kand made jokes and played games, with cards and dice and lots of fun things he had taken from the Kand camp. And they got back to the Meth Fields and Red guided Mr Kand back to her house, and they knocked on the door and mummy and daddy were so happy, and there were so many hugs and the finest meal in the evening. And Mr Kand had to stay, they said, he had to be made healthy again, and he did, and he was. But where have you been, Marqy?

  Marquos brushes off questions with dismissive remarks that he has seen nothing as exciting as her, but she insists they have heard stories about him; all around the Meth Fields everyone knows who he is, and she is so proud that the boatman is her boatman. He says he is not so sure. The father, Stoon, cuts in and asks her to run to the next room and get her paintings. She scrambles away.

  “We had a few days of it,” Martha gives a kind chuckle. She is a large woman, almost as big and manly as her husband, but has a caring face. “She told us all about your adventures. I’ll wager we know a few things about your life you didn’t know yourself.”

  “But then, we’ve heard things from other people, too. Is it true, are you him?”

  Marquos gives a short, silent nod back, half a smile to confirm it.

  “You look like you’ve been through as much as everyone says, and more,” Martha says. Marquos gingerly holds a hand up to the injuries on his face. Red runs back into the room with handfuls of paper, which she holds merrily in front of him. They are more developed than the scrawling renditions she produced on his boat, and she explains each picture carefully, especially pleased by the black piece of paper painted sporadically with white dots.

  “The stars!” she beams, “So many pretty stars! Tell them, Marqy! I tried to tell them but they don’t know, really!”

  “They were pretty,” Marquos says, smiling. “It’s a good picture.”

  “Thank you! You can keep that one!”

  Marquos holds it up with pleasure, saying “I’d be honoured.”

  Eventually, after much excitement and Red’s posturing about making Marquos and Mr Kand stay with them forever and ever, she rushes away from the room to prepare herself for dinner, and the parents’ eyes fall quietly onto Marquos with an air of awe that has barely left them since his arrival.

  “She is well,” Martha says. “We owe you so much.”

  “Anyone would’ve done the same,” Marquos returns an awkward smile.

  “If only!” Stoon exclaims. “For mo
ons after her disappearance, no one would listen to our pleas. We searched everywhere, asked everyone. No one wanted to know. Certainly not the Guard, they told us we were being mad. One man even suggested that if Red had been taken then it was her own fault! But now people know, now they’re ready to fight back! Thanks to people like you.”

  Martha adds earnestly, “I don’t know how we can ever repay you. How anyone in Estalia can.”

  “There’s no need,” Marquos shuffles uncomfortably, thinking back to the Mines and how he ended up on this path. The eagerness and hope in their eyes is all he needs to know how he must act, though. He is more than an accidental hero to these people, and he has to live up to that image. He tells them, as he has told many of his recent acquaintances, “I couldn’t travel through this world and stand for its corruptions anymore. Things can change, if we all do our bit.”

  Stoon punches a fist into his palm enthusiastically, “Yes! I have heard that the Mine Guard had a trailer raided on the road from Brofton to the Metropolis, and the children were set free. They have been driven out of the Meth Fields in the past few days, I am sure you are aware.”

  Marquos smiles. He tells them, “It was your daughter who opened my eyes to it all, I don’t mind saying. It’s important to have something worth fighting for.”

  When Martha and Stoon finally peel themselves away from Marquos, to attend to work and prepare a feast, Marquos has a moment alone with Lian. The thin Kand remains retiringly abashed, but where there was constant fear in his eyes before, there is now happiness and hope. The pilot says “Thank you for taking care of her.”

  “Please, it was nothing,” Lian replies, “I owe you so much. We all do. And I could not stay with Elzia anyway. Not with those brutes. It was not safe for me.”

  “So what now for you?”

  “I don’t know. These people are lovely, Marquos. They have been kind to me and encouraged me. I will return to Kand, through whatever means. It is where I belong. But what of you?”

  “I’ve a burden to carry now,” Marquos tells him, eyes falling at the thought. “But I’ve got some idea of what has to be done.”

  Lian nods quickly, excitedly, moving closer to the pilot, and tells him “You’ll do well, Marquos. You’re bound to do well. Everyone believes in you.”

  After a robust dinner, joined by Hart and Lian, the pilot informs them he cannot stay. He says he is needed elsewhere, knowing he can comfortably rejoin the fight in the knowledge that Red is safe. It is difficult for her to hear, though, and he has to take her aside to explain. As she regards him with accusing eyes, he kneels before her, a hand on her shoulder, and tries to explain in a manner that will become more and more common as he travels south.

  “A long time ago, before anyone remembers, the world was different,” he says. “The sky was blue, and millions of different creatures walked the earth. The ice of Afta was melted, and you could travel a thousand times further than the distance across Estalia. People lived in massive, peaceful communities, where the air was clean and there was no fighting. No one knows about it now because someone created something terrible that changed everything. For hundreds of seasons, no one has tried to find out what, or why, because we have been too busy fighting amongst ourselves. But the answers are out there, and if we can stop the violence in the world, maybe we can start to heal it. Do you understand?”

  Red nods, her face determined. She says, “I want to heal the world.”

  “Of course you do,” he smiles back, ruffles her hair, “And one day you will help to, when you’re ready. What I have to do now, though, is make the world ready for you. I’ll make it so that you can see the stars again.”

  Red gives Marquos a firm hug of goodwill and sends him on his way. He does not look back as he walks away from her home, a tear welling in his eye. Hart stays close to his side and says nothing at first, seeing how difficult it is for him to leave. When they are a short distance away, she whispers, “Are you starting to believe it yourself?”

  The pilot looks ahead to the sky, to where the clouds have parted slightly to reveal faint blue somewhere beyond, and tells her simply “I have to.”

  APPENDIX

  The World As I Understand It

  By Marquos

  Red says that I know things others don’t, so I should forever preserve my thoughts on paper. As a boatman in an empire connected by water, I have seen and heard much of our world, where minds are often dark as our days, so it befits me to share my knowledge. Maybe if we put it all into one workable picture we can start understanding how to improve things. Maybe if people started to read and write again, as I have been so blessed with the ability to do, we could start to understand where we all came from, and where we are going.

  I have been travelling since I reached manhood, after I laboured long enough to purchase the boat and home where I now dwell. Since then, my place of residence has served as my tool of work, and it has taken me as far as any man. From the centre of Estalia, I have drifted north, through the powerplants of the Meth Fields, and beyond Chapel Way, the pass through the Peat mountains to the west, to the industrial might of Thesteran. I have seen the massive machines of the Construction Frame, where the Guard build their technological wonders. Beyond Thesteran, even further west, I have travelled to the boundaries of the harbour city of Nexter, which sits on the Kand Sea. That is a body of water I have never ventured over: it is generally said that the lands of our neighbouring island Kand are purely barbaric, icy cold and a sure death sentence. The few Kandish folk I have met have proved to be world-class drunkards with no regard for where they are from; I am yet to meet a man who has a kind word to say about Kand. To the far east lies the North Sea port of Yerth, said to be crawling with bandits, and beyond their borders lies the great unknown wastes of the Deadland, otherwise referred to simply as the North. The Deadland has not been mapped before, something I personally intend to rectify.

  Along the coast from Nexter, far to the south, lie the remains of a large city called Mystle, long abandoned. Like much of the land to the west of Estalia, there is little life out that way, only sporadic dying communities. In fact, other than those few industrial centres either side of Chapel Way, it is a general truth that the further you get from the Metropolis the less life you find. The Metropolis is a thriving community. It lies a little way south of my hometown, and not far from the coast, spread over two sides of a great river, the Drain. Ramshackle homes have been twisted into sprawling towers and walkways, high above the ground to avoid the fumes that hover thicker than any in the Meth Fields. It is quite possible to walk from one side of the Metropolis to the other without touching the ground; indeed without even seeing the ground, for above a few stories the view is limited by smog, day or night. The waterways of the Metropolis are crowded with industrial vessels and small passenger ferries, but floating through the canals is a lonely experience. Everyone has somewhere to be, and no one wants to be in the lower reaches of the city, under the smoke from the Mines, an enormous pit complex to the west of the Metropolis, where the Mine Guard put countless slaves to work digging for fuel. It is an inhuman place, and I have had my fair share of conflict with those that run it, but without the Mines we would not have the fuel that drives crafts like my ship.

  Steam-power is the norm across Estalia, having increased greatly in popularity since I was a child, and now it is rare to see any transport conveyed without it. I have heard people talk of alternatives, including liquid-fuelled machines, but steam is here to stay. The liquid fuels are scavenged, never produced, and what we produce in the Meth Fields, piping gasses from under the earth, is good only for lighting lanterns, and will never move a boat. No one will dedicate the time to devise machines that use such power; the only ones we have are relics from a civilisation lost long ago.

  Around the Metropolis there are a number of other settlements, but the only one of serious note is the Extraner, a large seaport to the very south of Estalia. It is the location where the Water Guard and Border Guard
come to rest, when they choose to do so, and you can always find a colourful array of bizarre technology and people there. It is also the easiest place to find work for a man like me, and a good point of departure if you ever wish to visit Afta. Afta, across the water from Estalia, is an enormous body of land that dwarves Estalia, but there is little out there. Numerous nomadic plains and poorly kept canal-systems lead to the Eastern Tracts, where the water becomes impassably icy. The people are sometimes friendly, but they have little to offer; without the fuels and food production of our Estalian industry, the people of Afta are merely trying to survive, day to day. Some believe Afta was once a proud society called the Gracian Kingdom, a legend that many use to try and explain our world today.

  The Gracian Kingdom disappeared from the known world too many seasons ago to recall, and every man that speaks of it can offer no logical chain to the world as we know it. It existed in a time when countries were united by race and led to similar goals. The Gracian Kingdom and the Estalian Empire clashed in a war that would decide ownership of the known world, but it was a war that left one nation entirely destroyed and the other in a state of anarchy. No one believed in fighting for their nations after that, and whilst the Guards remain and some sense of Estalian identity continues, actual governance is a thing of the past. I can’t say for sure if such a thing ever really existed. But sometimes there are pieces of technology lying in the wilderness, which we can adapt and learn from, which hint to predecessors who knew more than we realise. Some even think that there was a time when the sky was clear.

  The sky has been dark for as long as I have known, hidden behind cloud. Some believe it is getting darker, but I do not ever remember a time when the sun broke through. Some call it the Chilling, saying the world is freezing. For sure, around the Southern Aftan Boundaries, the Eastern Tract and the Estalian North there are harsher climates than any man can safely endure, but it is as warm now as when I was a child. Others say it was not a natural thing, but some great disaster many seasons ago that brought this darkness upon us. These are all invented ideas, though; no one can give an accurate history beyond saying how his father survived long enough to raise him to adulthood. Including me. All I know of my town before my birth is that it was home to a few writers and the fields were slightly more fertile.