Chapter 17: Where the Wheel Stops
A staying house in Whalefall.
Something terrible was about to happen. Feeling started in their abdomen, walked up their spine, hid in the base of their neck. Nothing to do about it except write. And pray for the best. Or if not pray, top their head high and wait for oblivion.
Thought: That's what you wanna hear? That your days are numbered?
Bent over the elderwood desk and scribbled in their notebook because what do you even do at this point except scribble in your notebook and hope it makes sense? Keep inventory of this crazy upside-turvy world. What happened yesterday, day before, day before that, backwards forwards upwards outwards. They weren't gonna figure this out, fine, okay. But they could try to stick pins in points and maybe finally understand why this was happening.
They heard footfalls beating down the hallway, the hard kind. So their friends were back from the day market. And about to make their life a whole lot noisier before breakfast. Holy cripes, they loved their friends more than sweet sexy skyline.
Thought: To the end, to the start, to the cold night winds.
De'afi smoldered into the bedroom, kicked the door shut with hir foot. Hir arms full bursting with today's haul. Homemade bread, some figs and strawberry jam too, new hunting bow and a sweet ass knife. Viola held up this pretty cloth hang from Turaq. All lavenders and sunset, like sky pieces.
Traveling merchants came today, centerpieced the day market in rare goods. Ru Divine linen and silk, clay pots and spices from Kat-Ari, porcelain tea plates from towns way out near ports maybe, jams from Eudora, cocoa powder and other sweet things from Picaresque. Much more if they stuck around, but the merchants were already packing. Traded and paid for what they could. Traveling merchants rarely stopped off in places like Whalefall and never for more than a few hours.
"Morning sweet morning, space cadet," Viola said.
De'afi placed hir stuff on the gray elderwood writing desk. That bow cost hir a whole rabbit pelt and five silvers. Good of hir to go out hunting last evening, snag some pelts for trade. Didn't even know the merchants were coming.
"You know what a fig is?" ze asked.
"Sounds made up," Sadie Crane shrugged.
Guess they were from Eudora? Merchant got them off a ship or something? Rare too, worth two pelts and ten silvers. Weird ugly turnip-looking things.
"Heard they got figs in Asylum," Viola said. "Couple towns over."
"Isn't Asylum like, up the ass haunted?" queried the aviator.
"It's up the ass boring," said the journalist. "Leastways that's how Millennia told it. She was stationed there a little while."
Thought: This the first time she's talked about her older sis like this? Casually?
De'afi rubbed sweat sop off hir brow and elbows. Ze threw hir eyes at the cloth hang, peaked both hir brows.
"That ain't gonna fit in the bike," ze said.
"Yeah yeah, mind your business," Viola grumbled.
They ate fat slices of honey bread with jam and figs for breakfast. De'afi wanted to check out Cradle, see what that was all about. Then back on road 'till they hit the Spinners Club.
Yeah, fine, alright. Cradle. Sadie Crane shrugged. Not like they were on time. Anyhow, they needed more rest and think. Needed to fix this out for themself.
Thought: You've reached that no return point.
After attempt after attempt to stuff that beautiful cloth hang into the luggage compartment of De'afi's motorbike, Viola accepted defeat. Left that gorgeous piece at the staying house, donated with gratitude to a pair of old men and their five grandchildren. Moped about it for a good long hour.
Cradle.
So Cradle was this single-story barn edging the woods. Lofts converted into high-hang audience space. The feeling was solar system, looking down from below. Could see their house from up there probably. This jazz outfit from the town of Flint was on tonight, three people fifteen minute set no stop betweens.
There was a pond too, this little dugout of water. Feet from this barn where a bunch of rowdy people made love and got wrecked off strawberry ale. Abandoned furniture strewn all over the place. Must be lonely for a pond. Sadie Crane was feeling all that lonesome tonight like, ugh, spiders in their brain.
Thought: Where our bad habits crevice each other. To where motion flicks on and off. The last flash. The last opening of our eyes.
The anarchist came out back of Cradle, noise tapered into dead quiet. Sorta night where miracles could happen. Wasn't drinking tonight--beer was for idiots, tar cigarettes were for suicide victims.
De'afi came out next, lipstick love bites on hir neck. Some guy from, uh--um--Holler Hollow or something? Didn't get their name. Got their lipstick and cigarette smoke in hir clothes, which was--you know what? Let's call it nice. Let's call that nice.
Thought: Love kills you faster.
"Love kills you faster," the anarchist said out loud, eyebrow peaked.
"Who said love?" De'afi laughed.
Yeah, good point. Who said love? Who said a random guy in a random barn in random ass Whalefall had to be love? Millions in Arcadia and you were gonna call that love? Make hir laugh.
Spinners Club was horizon now, like they might actually get there might actually do what they came out for. Scary.
"Abakris still smoke?" the anarchist queried.
"Don't know, don't care, something else," ze sighed.
There had to be something, bottom of all that tar. Had to be something. Otherwise what's the point? And he probably did still smoke, be smoking until his fingers dropped. Or choked himself dead in his sleep. De'afi didn't even--okay, call hir heartless. Call hir heartless. Ze didn't give a shit what happened to him. Not for a long time. Was that so...bad? Maybe. Probably.
Thought: Fill your lungs with something that's not him.
The journalist came out, nested back of Cradle. Gods alive, gods stone dead. Been cold all day. Since they left that abandoned town. Late year, right. Getting snippy out.
"Deer?" Viola said.
"Deer deer deer," Sadie Crane said.
"Deery deery deery," said De'afi.
Stuck treeline, a bevy of deer gathered in plain sight. They were odd deer, by looks. Or weird deer, better known. Their antlers lopsided, eyes glowing in the early evening wane, staples of fur peeling off. Stood well back from the barn and the pond and the discarded furniture heaps.
A thin rivulet of blood drooled from Sadie Crane's left nostril. They caught it tip of their right index finger, smeared it down their jaw.
"Are you dying?" De'afi asked.
Thought: Least that'd make sense. Dying.
The anarchist hooked an arm round their stomach and flinched. Cripes. Gagging hard as shit now. Skin on fire, like sparks under paper.
"I wish," they mumbled.
The weird deer kept watch, front of treeline.
Viola stared unseeing into the bevy, arms come roughly on her shoulders.
"Hey, sunshine, where are we right now?" the anarchist queried suddenly.
"Where the wheel stops?" the journalist proposed.
"Yeah, sounds about fair," agreed the aviator.
Thought: You'd end up here. Sybil alive. Sybil dead. Sybil missing. Atoms apart, the difference.
The crowd yelled from interior. Their voices shrill and leavened, rapping fists on tables and floor and walls. What a time to be alive. Right here, right now.
Thought: You're happy. Really truly content. First time in years. And it feels good to be.
End of Chapter 17
It is emphasized how the morai, this faction of future tellers, past tellers, and present tellers, operate in strange unknowable ways. But since they are strange and unknowable, it can be said that any faction operating in this way can call themselves Morai. We all at once feel the past converge with present, then future, then a third thing none of us quite know what to do with. The unmaking of time is perhaps the cruelest trick our dead king ever pulled. We do not know where our stories end or where our ancestors begin.
--Excerpt from "The Forest of Misfit Trees" by Running Out of Time