Will you talk to me? Please?
In the still of each obsidian night, in her restless half-sleep, her torment, she doesn’t know what is dream and what is memory. Even her waking hours are cloudy and blurry, often distorted, like she’s viewing the world through a rain-streaked, ash-strewn window.
She stirs. Sits. Rubs her eyes. Blinks. Early morning. Quiet. No wind. No birdsong. It’s been a while since she’s even seen a bird, or another living creature.
She’s alone. She hasn’t always been alone. She’s almost certain of that. But she is alone now. Once, she thinks, there were others. A family, even. A child. Small and happy as only children can be. A few years, she thinks, that’s all we get. A few years of unfettered freedom and happiness before life begins its inexorable toll.
But the child in her splintered memories is happy. Smiling. Laughing. And their laughter is a summer laughter, bright and gentle and musical and soothing. Nourishing. And all too brief.
These dream memories are fragmentary and fleeting, like the grainy static transmissions that winked on then off again on her comm-plate when it was out of comms range. Now, she knows, everything is out of comms range. The towers are toppled. The lines are cut. Invisible wavelengths and frequencies aborted. The comms, like a lot of things, are long dead. Still, every morning she pulls the comm-plate out and presses her fingertip to the blank black screen. Sometimes she even speaks to it. Holds it up to her face and stares at her fuzzy reflection in the dull screen. Always the same one-sided conversation, as if recited from dream memory: “There you are,” she says. “Look at you. What will you do today? Will you talk to me? Please?” She’s no-one else to speak to, after all.
Hunger twists in her gut like a living thing, coursing like a river or a disease. She imagines it as both of those things; flowing, spreading, changing. Mutable. A river never retreats. Nor does disease. What’s coursing through her body, she wonders? What’s in her head?
She rises slowly from her bed of thin thread-bare blankets, crawls to the tent entrance, unzips it and peers out. Even through her mask she smells ash and a peculiar tangy acidity. The world gone sour.
Blinks again. Hazy. Still as death. The air cool with sorrow. The copse of birch trees are limned in silver-grey light. The ground is dew-spackled. Mist-shrouded. A still and static world daubed in thick grey splotches like a renaissance oil painting. A world that somehow, like her, beyond all expectations, still exists.
She zips the tent flap closed and moves to her depleted backpack, opens it and pulls out a small dented tin. She pulls the ring tab, unsealing the sardines. Pulling her mask free she eats the sardines, licking the oily juices greedily from her fingers. For now, she’s a brief respite from her hunger pains.
She dreamt—or remembered—that she forwent meat once, when beans and grains were plentiful. Dreamt she was at a large party with abundant drink and food; a large pig on a spit turning, its skin darkening and crackling, grease spilling from open seams, the char of burnt meat like a heat haze above her. It’s snout curling into a sardonic smile. And later, at the table, the swine’s hollow and sightless eyes scrutinizing her as someone walks up, snaps off one of the pig’s fire-crisped ears and eats it.
Breakfast finished, she packs the blanket and small tent and folds them expertly into her backpack to join her cutlery, bowl, small pot and fry pan. Then she heads out. To where, she doesn’t know. Uncertainty is one of the only certain things left to her.
Moving cautiously, she keeps to the broken tree line, straddling the pitted fields and the desiccated forest. She wears grey pants, and a grey hoodie, carries a large grey backpack that grows lighter each day as her provisions diminish. She’s wrapped her cutlery, pan, pot, and bowl in cloth so as to make as little noise as possible. Her boots are a scuffed charcoal. A mask of grey cloth completes the ensemble. She is a grey shape in a grey world. Blending in. Indistinct and ephemeral. Like a ghost. Perhaps she always was.
Briefly there’s a sharp, bright pain in her head, like a darning needle stuck into the meat of her brain, and her vision blurs. It’s like looking through glassine. She weaves unsteadily then orients herself. Her vision clears and the momentary sting in her head subsides. They’re coming more frequently now, she knows. She wonders if these episodes are nothing more than the onset of some buried memories trying to be unearthed. Some memories are painful, after all.
She looks up. Through the haze, she see patches of chalk-white sky. Weeks ago she saw a lone crow flying in a wedge of dust-blurred atmosphere, but nothing since. The crow disappeared into the grey mist with a feeble cry, a tiny black speck like a final, forlorn punctuation.
Once, she woke in the night to the crunch of footfalls and a sudden silence, like a breath held. In the night-dark she packed and hurried away. She did not wait around to see what it was. Anything large enough to disturb the ground-brush was a danger, man or animal.
Straddling the divide between field and forest is best, she thinks. The field is open and wide and if she sees anyone out there she can take cover in the forest. Conversely she should be able to hear if anyone approaches from the forest and, depending on the sounds, decide on a course of action. Though she’s had no survivalist training, this is what she reasons. Forest and field. Shelter or escape. Until she runs out of one or both. Until she runs out of reason. Or hope.
Despite a lack of training, she’s alert to any food sources; mice or mushrooms or wildflowers. Hunger simmers always at the edges, consuming her thoughts. If she has any protein sources, she eats them at breakfast to help carry her through the day. Lately though she hasn’t seen any mice in the fields or squirrels in the forest. No fish in the black streams. No birds in the darkening sky. Aside from some plants and a few crops, it’s as if all living things are dead or dying or hiding. Like her.
So, it’s a shock when she finds the baby.
It’s around midday and her stomach is a twisting anguish of complaint, and she’s scavenging the edge of the parched and browning field of heather—poking a stick into the grass, into the dry scrub, looking for any food source so that she might still save some of her final provisions—when she hears a faint rustle. Vole or mouse, she hopes, or (even better) a rabbit.
She eases the hunting knife from the sheath at her hip, whisper-soft, and steps toward the rustling noise. Here, the tall and dying grass forms a slight depression and she peers down to see a small brown bundle of sackcloth juddering on the hard-packed dirt among the dead leaves and wilted heather. Like an offering. A sudden gust and grassy tendrils fan across the bundle and there is a jerky twitch, then the unmistakable cry of a baby – shrill, keening, and persistent—and her heart, already hard and fast in her chest, does double-time. Her skin prickles. It’s as if she can feel the blood coursing through her faster and faster. Trap, she thinks. She crouches, does a 180 degree scan, turns and scans behind her. The cries continue, a hard wailing followed by a short gasping for breath then more shrieking. She moves away, slowly, still crouching, knife tight in her hand, heart hammering, and inches toward the trees. In the forest she finds a suitable spot behind a stand of pines and sits low. Breathes. Breathes. Calming. Calming. Heart rate slowing, slowing, like an engine idling but ready to go.
She waits. In the still of the forest, beneath the proud pines, among the stately birch, she waits. She’s unclear what she expects to happen. She should just keep going, through the dim forest like a passing wraith, quiet and unseen. Surely, she thinks, someone will come for the child. It isn’t her problem.
The child cries, insistent, and in the cries she hears the child’s fear, aware somehow of its abandonment, its precarious situation. Alone and defenseless, all it can do is cry for help. She tries not to think about as she wipes a stray tear from her cheek.
Her stomach clenches in agony. She pulls a canteen from the backpack, unscrews it, takes two long gulps of the stale, tepid water—sharp and alkaline. She finds a crusty heel of stale bread at the bottom of the pack, and chews at the hard exterior. She’d found it the day before at the edge of a road. A gift. She eats half the bread and then puts it away. Not much left in the pack—a tin of peas; a couple small dried apples, and the half-eaten heel of bread. She’ll have to chance a town soon.
The meager daylight is failing now. The world is a greyer grey, curdling to dusk. Twilight used to enchant her, a time when magic seemed possible in that silent and beguiling liminal space between day and night, light and dark. Now this edge of darkness heralds just more darkness. Dark thoughts for a darker world.
She pulls the comm-plate from the side pocket of her pack, stares at the dull, blank screen. In the dim light she angles the screen toward the forest-top, tries to catch some light, tries to catch her reflection on the matte black surface. How does she look? Bad, she thinks. And would she even recognize herself? This isn’t my face. She can barely remember what she looks like anyway. And it doesn’t matter. It never did.
Another dream memory tugs at her, makes her wince, another painful little shard in her head—she’s outside, huddling with someone, a child, she thinks, both their faces wrapped in wet gauze as a hot wind blows and blows. Then they are running, running . . .
She looks at the comm-plate. “There you are. Look at you.” She hugs the comm-plate to her chest. “Will you talk to me? Please?”
There’s a sudden blue silence and she realizes the child has gone silent. She was supposed to be on alert, but she’d drifted off. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That’s how you die, she thinks, looking back. Don’t look back. Never look back. None of that matters. Move forward. Keep moving.
Steadying her breathing, she stands. The night is coming, suffocating the last vestiges of pearly twilight. Quietly she moves out from the trees to the field. The dying light and the coming night form a grey penumbra on the horizon, an arc, like a protective shield. She grins behind her mask. There’s nothing to protect us, she thinks. Nothing.
She creeps toward the child. It’s still there, in the slight depression in the grasses that form a sort of natural cradle. Bending, she reaches down and touches the still bundle. There’s a sudden wail and she snatches the child up, pulls it to her chest to silence it and races back into the darkening woods. She runs and she runs, and in her head she pictures herself from another time, running with another child, as a hot wind sweeps the land, and she doesn’t know if it’s memory or dream or nightmare. All she can do is run. Run.
The child is fussing, and she’s rocking it in her lap, trying to calm it, making “sshhhing” noises at it. The night is oil-dark, but with the child she doesn’t want to risk a fire, risk bringing attention to herself from those that abandoned the child. So she rocks the child in the thick night, under a black and pitiable sky; a bed of dry pine needles hastily kicked together as a sort of rug for some small comfort.
Food, she thinks. The child needs food. And so does she. She can feel the knotting beginning in her belly that will soon wrack her in agony. And for the briefest of seconds she catches herself staring at the child, at the baby fat puffing their smooth cheeks, and . . . no! She doubles over, wretches, dry heaves. Then straightens, and still clutching the child holds it up and says softly, “There you are.” Squints in the dark. “Look at you.” She holds the child close and sobs.
They are deep in the woods, in a cradle of ancient pines. She found a small hollow that she filled with pine needles and leaves, affording a view from all sides, and camped there. She didn’t set up her tent. She wanted to be out in the open, not caught unawares. Though country dark, she figured she’d hear anyone or anything approaching.
But the child is squirming and she needs to feed them both. She’d done this before, cared for a child, she was sure of it.
She puts the squawking child down and wipes the wetness from her eyes. “Shush. Shush now,” she says. She tries a smile but doesn’t know if the child sees, and then remembers she still has her mask on, anyway. She pulls her hoodie up and off, lifts her shirt, and brings the child up to her breast. The child’s mouth latches onto her and it suckles. It releases and cries but she pulls the complaining child back to her and it quiets and continues to try to nurse. There’s no milk to draw from her breast, but it’s a familiar feeling to her. And to the child as well, suckling softly and looking up at her calmly now with bright eyes. There is a dampness to the child’s rags. It’s soiled them, of course. She’ll have to deal with that, she knows, but for now, in the dark, in this quiet moment, the child is seemingly content.
Light begins to filter into the forest. Above the tree line she sees a plum dawn spread across the sky, a bruise. She can’t remember the last time she’s seen the sun. It could have been months or days. Life has been a grim parade of grey days. She looks down at the child, now sleeping.
There you are, she thinks. Look at you.
Carefully, she places the child down on a nest of leaves. Like every morning, she pulls the comm-plate from her pack and presses a finger to the dead plate. She barely glances at the screen and is placing the comm-plate back when it suddenly hums, startling her into dropping it. She snatches it from the ground and looks at it, expectant. Blank. She shakes it. Nothing. She presses her finger to the plate again. Still nothing. She continues to shake it and press the screen over and over, but it remains black and dead. Defeated, she places it back in the pack and weeps quietly to herself.
Did she break it? Was it coming to life, and dropping it somehow broke it? She knows things can break when you drop them—gadgets and tools. People, too. She glances at the child. People can break.
If the comm-plate was coming back on, what does that mean? Are the comms back? If so, that’s good, right? Surely that is a good sign. If the comms are back, there must be people. Good people. Only good people would want to set the world right.
The child is sleeping soundly, wrapped in brown rags. She should try and rest, as well, but she’s a tight jumble of nerves. And hunger. Always hunger. A constant, often painful need. A gnawing. And she’s the child to feed, too. And wash. And keep from harm. She recalls these things, half-forgotten, or buried somewhere deep. It’s what we do, she thinks. Women. Mostly women. Mothers. Provide. Care. Heal.
Above, the sky is greying over with cloud and fog and dust, choking out the meager dawn. She tightens her mask. She’ll have to try and rig one for the child.
The child.
She has a child. A surge of conflicting emotions sweep through her, threaten to overwhelm her.
A child.
She had one once before, she thinks. Another memory or fragment half-buried, half-forgotten, only conjured recently. Because of the comms, she wonders? When the comms come back will all my memories come back? Will my child?
The clouds thin, and a faint orange glow lights the sky. She smiles, stands. And a sharp bright pain pierces her head, hot and stinging. She wobbles and her vision blurs. The sky and trees smear like ribbons of wet paint. Then the sensation of falling in slow motion. Then darkness.
The cry startles her to consciousness. The child!
She’s up and over to the child—crying and squirming and still on the ground, still in its sodden brown rags.
“Hush, sweet child,” she says. “Shh.”
By the quality of the dim light and the faint shadows cast from the tall trees, she guesses it’s mid-afternoon. The child has been alone for several hours. The realization shakes her, and something brittle inside her tugs loose as a dull ache pulses through her. She’s tired. So very tired.
“Look at you,” she says, bending and kissing the child’s forehead.
She retrieves her pack, pulls out the thin blankets, and her canteen. Using her knife she cuts a blanket up into manageable square-like pieces. She unwraps the dirty brown rags from the child and sets them aside. A girl, she sees. The child is a girl. Her breath hitches and inside herself she feels more pieces sliding free, falling.
The child is wet, but there’s no excrement, and she wonders when the child last ate, last drank, had any nourishment.
Child. She can’t just keep thinking of her as the child. She’ll name her. And once you name something, she knows, you own it.
Eve.
She’ll call her Eve. It was near evening when she found her, and she liked the name, liked the way it felt on her tongue all short and elegant and full of promise.
She unscrews the canteen and pours water on one of the smaller squares and scrubs and swabs at Eve’s exposed skin. She works quickly, drying her with a clean piece of the fabric. Finished, she ties one of the rough-cut blanket squares into a passable diaper, and uses a whole blanket to fashion a make-shift combination covering and carry-all, Eve nestled tightly inside. She can pull the fabric close to Eve’s face, providing a makeshift mask without obstructing her breathing.
Inside her pack she finds a can of peas, the last of the tinned goods. She opens the top part way, pours some peas into a bowl and mushes them thoroughly with the flat of her spoon. Lifting the carry-all, she pulls Eve close, pokes a finger into Eve’s mouth, runs the tip along her gums. One tiny tooth, and another about to come free. She spoons some peas into Eve’s mouth and grins as Eve accepts the food, eats it, her tiny body shaking, arms spasming, then opens her small mouth wide again, expectant, hopeful.
Eve finishes the peas. She debates preparing more, but Eve seems satisfied. Her own hunger courses through her. She tips a few peas into her mouth and chases it with a swallow from her canteen. She folds the slightly open tin closed as best she can, saving the rest of the peas, places them in the pack and pulls free the comm-plate.
Will you talk to me?
With the same finger that she poked into Eve’s mouth, she presses the screen of the comm-plate, holds it there. There’s a small buzz, and the comm-plate vibrates. Hums quietly. The screen brightens from black to grey to white. Her heart thuds. Icons populate the screen. She reaches out, tentative, touches one, the smiling face. A voice, static-filled, garbled . . .
. . . There you are . . . talk . . . today’s news . . .
. . . August twenty-eight two-thousand thirty-eight—Then muddled, the voice weakening—press to check your vitals . . . Distortion now as the screen flicker . . . have assumed control . . . checkpoints . . . medications . . . The screen flashes, and the voice winks in and out . . . vaccinated against . . . The comm-plate shuts down, the display black and dead. She presses the screen over and over, but it’s now lifeless.
Eve is silent. Too silent. She scoops her up, pulls the fabric from her face, and Eve cries out, annoyed, and she’s overjoyed at the angry wail from Eve, and she feels another tugging inside herself, a different wrenching from another part of her—a deep, plaintive and powerful joy—and she wonders how much of herself is left. The world just tugs and pulls and she’s given so much and she’s so very tired.
A stinging pain in her head, and she winces. If she succumbs what becomes of Eve? She has a momentary image of another child, in another time and place, and then the image is lost to her, like so many things.
She packs away her things, cradles Eve, stands. With the pack on her back and Eve in front, it’s a burdensome load. But she’ll manage. She’ll have to. Women are used to burdens.
Another grey and still day. Afternoon already. She’d lost so many hours to her ‘headache’. She starts out, threading her way through the tall trees, and steps out of the forest into a dry and dying field. Rain, she thinks. When did it last rain? She’ll need water. And something else for Eve.
She glances down at Eve. Calm. “There you are.” Smiles. “Look at you.”
She walks west, the world silent and still, following the dim light. That sour tang hanging in the air, curdling everything. Briefly there is another bright jab of hot pain in her head, and her vision smears and darkens, but it soon dissipates.
She’s crying now, clutching Eve close. “I’m sorry, sweet child.” Kisses Eve’s forehead. “I just need some time. That’s all I need. All I want.”
Walks in the ghost world. Carrying her load. Through field after field. Stops to tighten her mask and adjust Eve’s coverings. Stops to feed herself and Eve the last of the peas, the last of her water. Walks. Walks. West, following the failing light.
Eve cries. She stops, sets down her load, lifts her shirt to let Eve nurse from her dry breasts. Eve settles, and she lets her nurse until she falls asleep. She imagines breast-milk seeping from her nipples. Thinks and dreams and imagines a healthy Eve, a different Eve, a different world. For a while she just sits, holding Eve close. Sits and rocks and coos and cries.
Standing, with Eve asleep in front and pack secure behind, she moves west again in the twilight haze. The wind rises, moving and singing like a living thing, blows across them, and she can feel the air chilling. The field opens to a small valley and below her she can see a glint of dark water, can hear it rippling.
She eases down the slope to the bank of the stream. The water is dark. She places Eve down gently, bends over the water and sniffs. It smells good. She dips the canteen into the water, lifts it out, takes a tentative sip. In the stagnant grey light, she’s never tasted anything so good. She drinks long, emptying the container. Bending again to fill the canteen, she sees something floating past a couple feet away, caught in the current, twisting in the eddies. A small creature. A puppy, she sees, its eyes closed, as if asleep, peaceful. It’s underbelly pale and bloated as it rolls over and past her in the black churn. She watches it float away along the black creek in the darkening valley, dead but dreaming still. You can’t save everything, she thinks.
A cold breeze brushes past. She hugs herself, looks up at the blackening sky. Nightfall soon. She’ll have to find a place to camp. Cradling Eve and balancing the pack, she moves up the slope and edges westward. She keeps the creek in view below her, not wanting to stray too far from a water source. It’s not quite full dark when she finds a small stand of thin dying trees forming a small glade just over the slope-edge of the valley. It isn’t much, but it’ll have to do.
She unloads her pack, places Eve down on a grassy patch, then sits. Cold. The season must be changing. Even though they are more exposed here, she’ll have to make a fire to keep them warm. There are plenty of dead branches scattered nearby, like the discarded bones from a great feast. And briefly her mind flashes to that roast pig on the table, plump and pink and char, staring from its eyeless sockets.
Gathering the driest branches, she heaps them into a small pyramid-shape, and with a small piece of cloth and her lighter manages to start a fire. Her stomach tightens painfully, and Eve is now fussing. From the pack she pulls out a bowl, the heel of bread, and one hard dry apple. She devours the rough, tasteless fruit. With some water she makes a passable gruel from the bread, and feeds it to Eve, who takes it gratefully.
After, as she sits by the fire, she lets Eve suckle. She rocks her gently, cooing “Look at you. There you are.” Smiles. Then, from somewhere deep, a sliver of song, “Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s going to . . . ” What? Mama’s going to what?
The fragment eludes her. And Eve is sleeping. For a time, as the fire crackles low, and the stars pierce the night sky, she just sits with Eve attached to her, rocking slow, slow, content in the warmth and glow of the flames. She yawns. Wonders when she last slept.
She builds a little cradle of blankets and dead leaves near the fire and places Eve down. She pulls her knife and small whet-stone free and sharpens the knife until the edge glints in the firelight, then sheathes it by her side. From her pack she retrieves the comm-plate, squints at the black screen. Thinks, Are you dead or just dreaming? Maybe she’s dead but dreaming still.
Her finger touches the screen and it brightens and sparks to life just as her head explodes in a fountain of pain and everything goes dark . . .
. . . and something pulls her from the dark; something urgent and primal and her eyes snap open to see a figure bending toward Eve, reaching.
Suddenly the knife is in her hand and she’s up and diving and slashing and rolling and stabbing. The figure lurches away, and collapses a few feet from Eve, clutching at her. Her heart thudding wildly, she moves to Eve. Sheathing the knife she picks Eve up and checks her over. Satisfied, Eve cradled in one arm, she steps over to the prone dark figure. She stops shy of the reaching arm. A man, she sees. Black blood gurgling from the side of his neck, under his ear, like a small geyser. One hand is trying to staunch the wound while the other still spasms at the ground, fingers digging into the night soil.
He’s speaking, all muffled and gargled. “Shmine.” Points at them. “Mine,” he says.
She pulls Eve close, takes a step back. Her breath is coming hard. Eyes darting. Frantic.
The man coughs, glares. “Mine.” His eyes dark and hungry. She’s seen that hunger in many men.
Eve cries out, a keening screech piercing the icy darkness.
She retreats from the fire, from the dying figure. Her breathing has calmed, but she’s a taut spring of anxiety and alert to every little pop and crack from the fire, every feeble little movement from the man. Clenching Eve tight, she fishes in her pack and pulls out the canteen, the withered apple, her spoon, and her bowl; wrenches the knife free again and cleans the blood from it with a bit of their water and the hem of her hoodie. She cuts the apple into tiny pieces and mashes them with some more water and the spoon.
A loud, wet and phlegmy coughing from the man. She can see him shudder, arm in the air reaching to the sky. Reaching for what, she wonders. Salvation? Then silence, a stillness, as the night presses down.
She spoons the apple sauce into Eve’s expectant mouth. Her own stomach churns tightly. There’s a static buzzing in her head and the corners of her vision darken.
Eve finishes the apple sauce, squirms in her arms, uptight, her little face flushed even in the dark. She lifts Eve over her shoulder, rocks her, bounces her gently, strokes her back until a burp escapes her and she settles. Then another sort of belching and Eve squirts out some runny shit.
And she laughs, though she knows she shouldn’t, as someone may hear her, but she can’t help herself. Laughs madly, deeply, joyously.
She moves Eve to the ground, stares down at her, smiling. “There you are. Look at you.”
From the pack she tugs out the last blanket, cuts half of it away. Picks up the half-empty canteen, pulls her mask down and takes a small sip of water. With the rest of the water she cleans off Eve and fashions her a new diaper, then cleans herself. Eve is attentive so she nurses her, lets her drift off to sleep. Do babies dream? What do they dream?
After some time she places Eve down, swaddled in cloth so that only her eyes are visible. Eyes closed to the terrible night.
Sitting on the cold bare ground, she peers into the fire then up into the shadow-black sky, scrutinizing the silent stars, searching for answers to questions best left unasked, as if the sky or stars or fire could answer. As if they would. They just exist eternally, unjudging.
Where will we go?
What will we eat?
What will happen to me, when . . . ?
What will happen to Eve?
Her stomach is cramping, and her head still tingles with an icy static, blackness edging her vision. Her breasts are changing, too, Eve’s suckling hardening them, making them sore to the touch. Glancing at the sleeping Eve, she stands, pulls the knife from her sheath and walks over to the motionless man, nudges him once, twice, three times with her boot. Nothing. Dead. Looks at his inscrutable face. Does he dream, still?
She crouches, pushes his head to one side and examines the wound in his neck, below his ear. Black and ragged and wet. His pitiless dark eyes regard her with a cold indifference. She shivers. Even the long-ago swine, butchered and cooked, hollow-eyed and sightless, observed her with less enmity.
She decides. Places the knife-edge behind one ear—bracing his head with a knee and tugging on the meaty flap of flesh—and starts cutting with a sawing motion. The springy meat soon pulls free with a snap and rests in her palm, like some sort of shabby pastry, a sticky breakfast Danish. She flips his head to the other side and extracts the other ear.
The fire is dying. Ears in hand, she walks to the dwindling flames, pats and tamps them down with her boot so that there is just a small bank of glowing coals and embers. She fetches her small fry pan, places the ears in them, and positions the pan on the coals. And waits. Checks on Eve, sleeping still. Quiet, calm, content. Checks on the ears, crisping slowly in the pan. Her stomach roils in distress, as does her head.
The stars stare down like icy eyes, glinting shards of secret knowledge. To the east a band of indigo is rising up to purple the sky like a week-old bruise.
Fragments crowd her thoughts, of times past and recent; hazy and hot, a child clenching to her then slipping free in the chaos; a dead dog dreaming; a smiling swine; and Eve. She’d lost a child once, she now knows. She won’t lose another.
She looks at her hands, turns them front to back, seeing the wear, the small scars and nicks, the chipped and worn fingernails. She clenches them, and sees their strength, too. A lifetime of use. And sometimes that lifetime isn’t long. She brings her hands to her face and sobs into them, deep and wracking. And freeing. She will lay her anguish bare.
A sudden shock of pain in her head makes her flinch. She blinks, stares at the fire. Wrapping the handle in cloth, she pulls the pan from the fading coals and waits as it cools. The ache in her stomach is constant and obstinate, unending. Like grief. Thinking of Eve, and looking up at the shrewd stars, she plucks the blackened flesh from the pan, shoves it in her mouth, chews, and forces it down. Then she rolls over on her side, clutching her abdomen, weeping, letting all her sorrow leak out.
A squawking noise brings her quickly back up to her feet. She moves over to Eve, but Eve is sleeping still, little chest rising and falling with each little breath. Another squawk from behind her and she turns to see the comm-plate where she’d dropped it, forgotten, its screen bright now amid the darkness. She picks up the device, squints at the sudden brightness. There are words emanating from the comm-plate, over and over, a repeating loop, faint but discernible.
There you are. Look at you. There you are. Look at you. There you are look at you. There you are look at you. There you are look at you. Thereyouarelookatyou. Thereyouarelookatyou. Thereyouarethereyouarethereyouare.
“Hello,” she utters. “Hello. Will you speak to me? Hello. Are you there? Will you speak to me, please?”
But the comm-plate continues its monotonous drone, repeating the same phrase again and again and again. She presses the screen, and it powers down. She packs it away with the fry pan, scoops up Eve, and though still mostly dark, with dawn just cresting, she walks toward the river. Briefly, she thinks of the man lying dead behind her. But only briefly.
When she reaches the river, morning has broken orange and bright like an egg. She’s momentarily dazzled by the sun. Eve is awake, squirming, making blubbing sounds. She puts Eve and her pack down, fills her canteen and drinks deeply, greedily. She wets her fingers and dribbles water onto Eve’s lips, watches her mouth respond. She fills the canteen again, caps it and puts it away.
By the riverbank she sits and pulls Eve to her chest to suckle. The river flows languid, unhurried and unceasing. She feels its pull. Eve nurses, insistent, and she can feel Eve’s mouth on her hard breast pulling sustenance from her. She can feel her own stomach, queasy and unsettled.
Satisfied, Eve pulls free, stares at her unblinking, eyes bright like marbles.
With her last half blanket and some river water she manages to clean and change Eve. Her head is prickling inside, as if tiny electric stingers are poking the meat of her brain. She looks around at the glinting river, the blooming sun, the distant forsaken fields and trees. The air smells of grass and earth. Then, as if in a dream, a bird soars silently past above her and disappears into the horizon.
She takes the comm-plate from her pack, presses the screen. It illuminates immediately.
“There you are. Look at you.”
She laughs.
A pain behind her eyes and everything darkens. She presses the medical symbol on the screen.
“What assistance may we offer you today, Hamida?”
Hamida? Is that her name? She’d never considered her name, herself. Perhaps this isn’t even her comm-plate. No matter, she liked it. Hamida. Liked the sound of it. It felt good. She smiles. “Hamida,” she says.
“What assistance may we offer you today, Hamida?”
“Food,” she says. “We need food.” And everything, she thinks, peering at Eve. “Medicine, too.”
“There is a temporary reintegration center 3.4 kilometers south from your present location. Follow the map on your screen.”
Reintegration. Into what, she thinks. What’s left?
South. The river runs south, and the map now on her screen shows the way. They can follow the river.
She drinks from the canteen again, refills it, and packs it away. Affixes her ragged mask to her face. Gathering Eve and her pack, she heads south, along the riverbank. She enjoys the sound of the water, almost musical, drowning out the buzz in her head. She likes the scent of dirt and earth on the air. There’s a sudden sharp recollection of a rainy day and the smell of worms in the air. And she wonders if it’s her own memory as a child, or that other child. Wonders if her memories will return. The air has that earthy quality to it now. But it’s sunny and bright not a rain cloud in sight. She misses the rain. Misses a lot of things.
That other child.
Powerless to stop it, a surge of melancholy overtakes her, forcing her to stop and catch her breath. She turns around, looking back to the north. She pulls Eve up, kisses her forehead, says “I love you. No matter what. I love you,” then turns and walks south again.
Time has no reference point to her anymore, but she figures it’s been about an hour of walking when they crest a small rise and see the large domed shelter in the distance. Here, the river angles away slightly to the east. There’s a vast open meadow of tall grass in front of them. They’ll have to cross it to get close to the shelter. She consults the comm-plate. That has to be the reintegration center.
Briefly she sits. The sky is beginning to cloud over. The river continues to sing to her. Eve smiles. She bounces Eve up and down on her lap.
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s going to . . . Mama’s going to . . . ” She looks to the south, to the dome. “Mama’s going to . . . ”
Standing, she pulls on her pack, cradles Eve, and begins to cross the meadow. The long grass is dry but still alive. Bent but not broken.
As they near the dome she sees activity, people moving around the perimeter. She crouches low in the grass. Men, women, children. Lined up at tables. Some of the children are playing, chasing each other. Hears them, too. Laughing.
Don’t look back, she thinks. And she doesn’t as she stands and walks the last few hundred feet.
And there is a woman at the very first table with a smile and a kindly face who looks up at her and says, “There you are.”
“Yes.” She’s trembling.
“I’m Aiko,” the woman says. “Can I ask your name?”
She blinks, remembering. “Hamida.” Savors it. “I’m Hamida.”
“Welcome, Hamida.” Kindness in the woman’s voice. “What’s your baby’s name?”
She looks at Eve. My baby. Looks at the woman, Aiko, smiling expectantly. “Eve,” she says.
“Pretty. And a daughter. It must be nice to have a daughter.”
“It is,” she says, voice croaking. “It’s the most wonderful thing in this world.”
“You’re safe now,” Aiko says. “You and your daughter.”
Her head pulses with pain. Her heart fills. “Thank you,” she says, because she can think of nothing else to say. And then it’s raining, softly. A gentle summer shower pattering all around them.
“Finally,” Aiko says. “And you can remove your mask. It’s okay. Really.”
Hand shaking, faltering, she peels the mask away. She lifts her face to the sky, lets the rain wash down her dirty cheeks, dribble off her chin. Lifts Eve up. Eve squeals in delight or distress. She hugs her tight.
Aiko says, “Can I see your comm-plate? I’ll return it right away. Promise.”
She passes the device over. Aiko presses the screen, studies the result, hands the comm-plate back. “You better get inside. Follow the orange line.” Smiles. “It was lovely seeing you. Good luck.”
She smiles, and again can think of nothing else to say but “Thank you.”
Inside is a hub of activity. Eve is quiet, alert. Rain drums a melody on the dome, melodious and haunting. And she’s so tired, fatigue shackling her. The pain in her head is unceasing, vibrating through her like an electrical current. Her vision is dimming, dark edges closing in.
She follows the orange line to a medical tent, and is greeted and welcomed and placed on a cot, where she collapses. Someone reaches for Eve, but she finds some small reserve of strength and holds her tight.
She thinks she hears a voice, far off. “All right,” says the voice. “We won’t harm your baby. We’ll take care of her.”
Her voice is thick and choked. “P-Promise?”
“Yes.”
And she believes it. Can feel it. “Hungry,” she says.
“Feed your baby. We’ll check back shortly.”
She pulls Eve to her, and Eve feeds, her tiny body a comforting weight. She closes her eyes. The darkness now is a comfort. And soon she must be sleeping, then dreaming, because the pain is receding, her fatigue lifting, her hunger diminishing. In the dark in her head she pictures another child from some other time. I’m sorry, she whispers. I love you. And now she feels only the small presence of Eve, resting and sleeping too. Does she dream?
She gently squeezes Eve, strokes her back. There you are, she thinks. Look at you.
Above her she can hear the rain, a steady rhythm like the beat of a heart. And then the cadence slows, slows . . . and . . . stops.
She’s finally at rest.
Originally published in Looming Low, Volume II, edited by Justin Steele and Sam Cowan.
