The Electric Kingdom

by David Arnold

  How had she never read this before? Had her dad mentioned it? She thought she’d remember, as it was one of those rare compositions that forced the reader to believe the author was nothing short of an oracle, listening to your secret thoughts, walking into the corners of your soul, taking your ugliness and turning it to beauty on the page.

  “‘. . . ascend and enter the Unknown,’” she read aloud, as pieces of her final conversation with her father came back to her: The unknown can be scary. But when the known is death itself, you enter the unknown.

  She stared at the poem’s title, big block letters, as if willing her to defy their truth:

  “PORTALS.”

  Gently, Nico closed the book, one of her treasures from Books-a-Million, in what felt like a lifetime ago (and in a way, she supposed, it was a lifetime ago). She set it on the bedside table beside the photograph of her young parents, which she’d arranged in a way that allowed her to see them from any given point in the room.

  Exhausted but wired, she flipped through one of the red journals at random, landing on this entry, still years away:

  DATE: May 7, 2033

  ACTION ITEMS:

  —Farmhouse delivery. Last time, we found a note on the door requesting more taco seasoning.

  She remembered putting in that request. And the joy she’d felt on the day it arrived.

  After reading a few more entries, something occurred to her. A trend. The more ambitious Lives—the ones that stretched the boundaries of their power—generally ended in trauma, disaster, or grief. Whereas those Lives who understood and respected their power were generally fulfilled.

  She shut the journal, was about to set it down for the night when she noticed something else. There, on the back cover, a single word etched into leather: LIVES.

  Below that, four columns of tiny numbers carved from top to bottom, beginning with number 1, ending with number 160.

  Each number had been crossed through.

  Up here, in this house on top of a mountain, the moon seemed closer, its shine through the window a light she’d never known. In that light, Nico stared at the crossed-through numbers and considered the chickens in the fortress-coop, the eggs she would have tomorrow morning. The refrigerator and stove, the showers and sinks, the records and lights and life that was possible here, and she wondered why the Architect had denied himself survival in a place so well-equipped to survive. Maybe one day she would have more than theories, she would have certainty. Maybe the Farmhouse would seem a distant memory, and she would think, Surely that was some other person. But on that first night, she stared at her own two hands and considered those two little birds that had once brought her family exotic foods from far-off lands, and she thought, How strange that we should ever think we know anything at all.

  Reaching down, on the floor by her bed, Nico pulled her knife from her bag. Very carefully, she etched a new number into the back of the Red Book.

  THE DELIVERER

  If I could wear a city like a sweater, I would wear Boston.

  I stand behind a statue, staring up into the second-story window of an old stone apartment, and even now, hyper-focused on the window, the feathery wintertime beauty of the city is distracting. Every city looks better buried in snow, no amount of destruction outside its reach: ruins and craters where buildings once stood, overturned cars and piles of bones, the beauty of snow does not discriminate.

  And, if timed right, can make an easy job of tracking.

  They’d been a tough pair to miss: one set of boot prints, one set of loyal-to-the-bone paw prints.

  I wonder if their pulses have consolidated yet.

  At one point, the tracks multiplied, the comings and goings of a small group, all from the same stone apartment. Every window in this apartment is dark or damaged, save one.

  From behind my statue, I stare up at this window with its small flickering light, and I wait. To what end? Do I plan to talk to him? Will I tell him who I am? Back at the Farmhouse, when I’d first had the idea to come find him, the question of purpose seemed insignificant.

  Once I get there, I’ll know why I came.

  Now I’m here and the same voice is saying, Once you see him, you’ll know why you came, and I can only hope that voice is right.

  I wait.

  I don’t know how long. Because time is wind.

  And then it happens. It’s quick, and so I stretch the moment to my liking . . .

  His face in the window, looking up at the night sky, the boy I loved, now half my age. And in this stretched-out instant, my pulse quickens as Harry jumps up beside him, puts two paws on the window. A second person appears now, and Lennon turns, says something to her—

  They smile, and the window is empty again.

  The voice was right: I know why I came. And where else I need to go.

  NICO

  The commune was tucked in the pocket of a mountain, exactly as the Red Books described. Tents were positioned like a little village, well-worn paths running this way and that. It was the middle of the night; the moon was young, a sliver in the sky.

  A few of the tents were lit from the inside, a single flame flickering through canvas, but most were dark.

  “Quiet now, okay?” Nico handed the little boy an applesauce packet, which he readily accepted.

  After miles and days together, she still wasn’t sure if he could talk. Probably around three years old, he was the kind of quiet that made her wonder how much he really understood. She picked him up, and together, they circled the settlement, headed toward the sprawling oak near the back where they would find the appointed tent.

  Already, Nico felt the cadence and calls of the woods were her own, the roots of her knowledge sunk deep in its soil. And so the guards on duty did not see her, nor did the man who, mere feet away, had thrown open his tent flap and stumbled outside to relieve himself.

  Nico was a ghost when she needed to be.

  They reached the tent in question. She stopped, took a breath, opened the flap, and entered. In the corner, a low candle burned; its light shone green through her tinted visor, and in that light, she saw the woman on the ground wrapped in heavy blankets, breathing peaceful rhythms of sleep.

  Nico set the little boy down, motioned again for him to keep quiet. He held up a tiny hand, displaying the empty packet, eyes begging for more. She pulled another applesauce from her biosuit pocket, handed it to him, and knelt beside the sleeping woman.

  Dakota Sherouse was younger than Nico imagined, her face kind and careworn. And whether because Nico saw only what she wanted to see, or because the traits were actually there, she saw in this face the shades and brushstrokes of the face to come.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, and just as Dakota had been the angel for Nico’s birth, Nico became the angel for Kit’s. “One day you will have a son.” Tears caught in her throat; she pushed them down, went on. “And he will be one of a kind, a pure soul, and a friend to those in need.”

  The rhythms of sleep stopped abruptly.

  Nico held her breath, waited for them to begin again. When they did, she pulled the key from her pocket, reached out, and placed it gently in Dakota’s outstretched palm. “Do not be afraid,” she whispered again. “This time, I’ve taken care of everything.”

  Nico turned and, before leaving the tent, knelt beside the little boy. The key was written in the Red Books; bringing it here was a necessary step, one that had proven to work time and again.

  The boy, on the other hand, was a gamble. No other Life had brought him here.

  There was no telling how it would go.

  “This is your home now,” she whispered. “This woman will take care of you.”

  Only later, alone again, a ghost in the woods, would Nico have time to begin processing what she’d done. She would remind herself that other Lives had tried similar things, but while theirs had end
ed in total disaster, hers had, at the very least, given this little boy a better life. For years she would wonder if it worked, if the pieces she’d broken of her own soul had been for nothing. She would sit on the edge of her cliff at night, and plead with God, the Red Books, the stars, anyone who would listen, to let Kit live a full life. She would write it all down in the Red Books, in hopes that it worked, in hopes that future Lives would do the same, and that Kit would live again and again.

  “I’m sorry for what I had to do,” Nico whispered to the little boy in the tent. “I hope you don’t remember what you saw.”

  He held out his hand for another applesauce.

  Nico pulled the last one from the pack and opened it. Handing it to him, she smiled and lightly rubbed his cheek. “Goodbye, Gabe.”

  She left the tent without looking back, eager to get home and wash Bruno’s blood from her suit.

  THE DELIVERER

  In a bobbing kayak, seven miles off the coast of Rye, New Hampshire. From the mainland, the Isles of Shoals had appeared as little rocks on the horizon; once I got out here, it was clear which island I would find him on.

  I keep close to the rocks, low and unseen. The wind and ocean are freezing, but my suit is warm, my mind clear.

  I hold binoculars to my eyes. This particular island is clearly the tech hub of the community; I’m not even sure what I’m looking at. There are solar panels, yes, but also what appear to be miniature versions of the hydroelectric stations along the Merrimack, little steel cage-like structures linked by wires and antennae, and all of it connected to a lighthouse.

  And then I see him. In the lighthouse, either adjusting or affixing an antenna. It is the first time I’ve seen Monty since the cabin in the woods: eighteen years ago for me, only a few months for him. Someone joins him now, and I adjust the binoculars to find Lakie beside him, rifle over one shoulder, and together they look . . . happy? Maybe.

  Content.

  They look content.

  I don’t see Loretta, but she could easily be on any number of these little islands. Given the look of contentment on Monty’s face, if she is alive, she is in this place.

  And I know why I came to the Isles of Shoals.

  It’s the same reason I went to Boston.

  I needed to know my friends had people in their lives willing to walk through strange doors into dark places, so long as they could walk there together.

  Binoculars packed, I hold the paddle in my lap, let the rhythms of the ocean take me. All around, the sounds of the sea undulate, roll in softly, flow out loudly; I look up at the sky, and when I ask the question, it feels new because I am new.

  “How can I fight this darkness?”

  The stars seem a little less cold than usual, a little more caring. And whether from seeing Monty for the first time in years, or a directive from the stars themselves, I think of that cabin in the woods, how I’d first approached it with a sense of having been there before.

  Can you imagine living here? Monty had asked so long ago.

  I never answered him, because yes, I could imagine it. It had seemed impossible at the time, a memory from another life . . .

  9 YEARS LATER

  NICO

  "Halfway there,” said Nico, passing the crooked birch she’d long ago marked as the halfway point between her House by the Solar Cliffs and the Farmhouse. Winter deliveries always took longer, the contents of the pushcart weighed down in snow—five-pound tubs of cinnamon felt like ten, candles and freeze-dried meals seemed twice their size.

  Last time, after dropping everything through the slat in the door, she’d felt someone watching her as she walked away. In the nearby brush, she’d quickly turned to find the curious eyes of her younger self peering through the cracks in the boards of her old bedroom window. There it is, she’d thought. The realization that the Deliverer is a person, not a couple of magical birds.

  All around, the woods were white with snow, a new-bright blanket. There was no green left in the trees, no yellows or maroons, just old brown trunks and twigs hanging around. Her years in the woods had instilled a deep respect for trees. So many things to love about them, not the least of which was their determination to exist.

  We’re a little like trees, don’t you think?

  Memories of her father’s words came often, like excerpts from her favorite books. And anyway, wasn’t that exactly what she’d been given? Her Lives were imperfect like a book, unexpected like a book, and as books were made from trees, perhaps her father was right in more ways than he knew. He’d done more than give her a story—he’d given her life inside the story.

  She stopped, suddenly—

  Be the Listener.

  There. The low hum.

  It could be nothing else.

  Nico set down the handles of the pushcart, unzipped a pocket of her biosuit, and pulled out a compact plastic tarp. Quickly, she spread the tarp across the top of the pushcart, wrapped it underneath, and tied the corners together. Once done, she dug the metal hooks of her boots deep under the snow, into the hard earth below, and waited.

  THE DELIVERER

  It is the kind of warm night that makes the cold ones seem far away. In my lap, St. John looks up at me, her eyes alight, inquisitive, and slightly judgmental: Who are you again?

  Years together, and still, she treats me like a stranger, only wants my attention until she’s got it. I’ll be occupied in the garden, chopping wood, or working on the jury-rigged water filter, and she’ll paw and mew until I set down what I’m doing, carry her here, let her sit in my lap. This usually lasts about four minutes before she gives me this exact look, and then off she goes, back into the woods, tail held high in smug victory. After a whole childhood with a dog, nine years with a cat has been a daily mindfuck. But her eyes are turning older, the fur around her nose and ears grayer, and I cannot deny that when St. John is gone for good, I will miss her.

  “I am Nico,” I say, gently rubbing her back. “A person in three acts.”

  Early April now, the trees are breathing and alive. Not alive like plants but like people, talking, loving, laughing. I gave them a good trim years ago, reshaped their relationship with the sun, and now the air is full of their chatter, their hands stretching toward one another, toward me, and how could I ever feel alone? Behind the cabin, the Merrimack flows wild and free, louder at night, it seems, or maybe louder in April.

  Seasons: the earth’s rhythms, to which all things march in time.

  “Act One, in a Farmhouse with people I love.”

  A Farmhouse now emptied, its goods long since relocated and dwindled: Metallyte buckets, candles, lighters, soap and salt and sugar. What filter bottles were left, I’d gutted, reconstructing their insides into a few food-grade buckets to create a large-scale filter.

  The Cabin Leibowitz is no afterlife, but it often feels like my life after. It is smaller than I remember, but cozier, too. Three mattresses stacked in one corner, my biosuit hanging by the door. On the bedside table, where there once was a child’s drawing of a family, there is now a different portrait: an old photograph of my young parents. And on the wall, where once hung a blueprint of the Cormorant, now hangs the most perfect sketch I’ve ever seen, given to me long ago by the most perfect soul I’ve ever known: in the drawing, a woman sits in an old cinema projection room, a silver key dangling from her necklace, brushing the forehead of her young sweet-faced son.

  It took years, but I finally found the perfect spot to hang it.

  “Act Two, alone in a house of electric light.”

  My gardens are coming along nicely, flowers around the graves and blood-tree, vegetables and fruits and herbs in the clearing out front. Among the books I’d hauled from the Farmhouse were a few on the practices of gardening: which vegetables to grow and when, how and where, best for protein, most versatile.

  No hunting. No meat. Whether it’s the killing that draws
the Fly, or the meat that causes the Flu—or both, or neither—I am content. I have had a really good tomato. I have had good friends, and I have known love, and if this is life after the Red Books, then I can live with that.

  Occasionally I consider going back to my House by the Solar Cliffs, but the notion never sticks. The house was a product of the Books, which I am done with, and a necessity for the Deliverer, who is no longer me, and so in a sense—and for lack of a better term—I outgrew my enormous home.

  Anyway, it belongs to Echo now. I do hope it has treated him well.

  “And Act Three”—I look the cat right in her old eyes—“in a cabin by a river with an ungrateful cat.”

  St. John hops off my lap, disappears around the corner of the cabin, and I have a sudden memory of playing the Game with Harry.

  God, I miss that dog.

  I’m lost in thought when St. John reappears at the corner of the cabin, looks at me, and then looks back the way she came.

  “Yeah, but what are you gonna do once I get over there?” I stand, smiling, and step down off the porch. “Some cunning plan to make me look stupid, I’m sure.”

  When I reach her, she trots a few more steps along the side of the cabin, toward the back, and then stops at the top of the hill, staring down at the Merrimack.

  I bend down to pet her when I see what’s got her attention.