Chapter 21: Going Down
Listen. Here's an old story.
There was a boy on a motorbike. Riding nowhere. Thought maybe he'd run into the Great Big Sky. This place where it's all flat and you can see forever. Folks say there's nowhere like that in Arcadia, nowhere it's just flat.
Been traveling since October of last year. But the air smelled of Titus now, of rain and foliage. He was called Sunlight Over Snowy Pastures, an Arcadian name he gave to himself when he was old enough.
He stayed in Alcoast a little while. Talked with this woman called O'anna and stayed the morning at Long Way Home. He left town at midnight, side-saddled the road and got himself a couple hours shuteye.
Late night to late morning, he walked several miles and reached the town of Wayback.
Found a house. Wasn't much to look at. A skin of paint weather-ripped off the arched roof, the front door replaced with a swift of thick browned butter fabric like an unsheathed alcine pelt, old newspaper stuffed into face-front windows. This house did not want to be disturbed.
The pelt was pushed aside and a stranger with a soft round muffin top walked onto the porch. The stranger looked him square in the face, a pocketknife in one hand and their other closed in a fist.
Sunlight Over Snowy Pastures breathed in, then out. He felt that stare like he always did, a young boy on the cusp of adulthood made of dancing willow tree limbs. A ribbon red as blood snaking through his long dark braid like a river of causality.
A little house in Wayback
Sadie Crane stood on the porch straight as a rattlesnake's tail. The kid--and he was just that, a kid no older than eighteen--looked at them like the starting paragraph of a book he read in school. The first leg of an insurmountable journey.
They sucked air far back in their throat. Cripes. But, right. Talking's easy. It's just breathing with more shapes and sounds.
The Stranger came closer to the porch. His eyes big and deep like an owl's, skin toned blackish umber-brown just a few shades darker than Sadie Crane's.
"I'm looking for where the sky goes on forever," said the stranger. "It's around these parts."
What's he mean by around these parts? Sadie Crane wondered. The ark itself? Town of Wayback? All Creation? Hard to say.
"Oh, sorry, did I tell ya my name?" he said. "It's Sunlight Over Snowy Pastures. Sorry, shoulda started with that. My folks said I got more tongue than sense."
"You're fine," the anarchist promised. "My auntie Black Sparrow used to say I got a head like a hole. Stuff goes in, not much else comes out."
Sunlight Over Snowy Pastures barked out a laugh. Yeah, that sounded like something his granny would say. Before cracking an outside slipper right across his bare knuckles for laughing at her.
"Oh hell," he said. "Arcadian?"
"Yep," they said back, grinning.
They ruminated for a second on strings of history entangled through Arcadia, bridges crossed and stories known only to their ancestors. Then made quick into the house, where it was cozy and history no longer mattered.
Curtains divvied the interior. A small living room, ass-worn couch and a bunch of half-naked armchairs arranged in a semicircle. The leftmost had a sink, a wood-burning stove, a cupboard, and an ice box. The rightmost had a bed, a dresser, and a porcelain tub.
They offered Sunlight Over Snowy Pastures some of the red apples they'd been eating. He peeled off the skin, leaving the inside and cores to be thrown away or composted or eaten later probably.
"You eat weird," Sadie Crane said.
"Yeah, I been told that," he said, not at all offended. "You smell weird."
"Thanks," they said. "It's perfume. Ru Divine."
"It smells bad," he said.
"Gods, I know," the anarchist sighed. "The guy said it'd keep bears away. Or make somebody fall in love with me. Dunno about that. You in love with me?"
"Nah, you smell like shit," the kid said back.
"I knowwww," whined the anarchist dramatically.
They squatted down on the floor and pulled up their deerskin pack. A black feather adorned where the old jackalope's foot used to be. From Viola, picked up sometime late in Bygone.
"You not one of them culties, right?" queried the anarchist suspiciously.
They should've asked before, true. But just didn't think to, starved for interaction as they were.
"I'm not some culty fuck," he said. "You think I'd be out here on my lonesome if I was?"
Sadie Crane lowered their guard. They'd had enough close calls, fleeing dead of night from a warm bed or the embrace of a lover.
"I wasn't gonna kill ya if you were, by the way," they said, a verdant truth unexpected even to them.
Arcadia's had cults since before Sadie Crane's mama and aunties and were born. Young resurrectionists and radicals. They liked setting shit on fire and killing livestock.
End of Chapter 21