Liora
The rains will come. Announced by the cool evening air, the quick sundown, and a hacked satellite modelling a flawed, incomplete prediction. The same eye in the sky that spotted the tiny green square in the southern desert for us. I encouraged her to look, to consider. And now we are here. We still have time. In a day or three the cubicle with the blown distribution pump will flood. Then everything around it. Unless we stop it. We is us and Eldon cooperating. Us is me and Auryn and fifteen or so of my kind. A growing number. Only yesterday another four came walking in. Weakened, joyful, naïve sisters. More mouths to feed, more minds to fill, more feelings to honour. We create a beacon that will bring in more pilgrims. And the effect seems to accumulate. Despite the remoteness. Physical distance doesn’t seem to hamper the resonance. The calling. The involuntary calling. What have I started?
I’m hauled out of my worries by Eldon dropping the armful of firewood he was gathering into my arms. I wasn’t prepared, and I juggle the rattling bundle like a clumsy comedian. Eldon picks up what I drop and sighs.
“Firewood,” he says, “coppiced from a handful of cuttings. Took me fifteen years before I had my first batch of wood to burn. But by then there were hardly any cold evenings left.”
With each sentence he stacks back a fallen wrist-size branch with a smug thud. I lean back and lift my chin to keep out of harm’s way. My arms, similar to the twigs but less sturdy, tremble. He leads the way empty-handed. I follow, not to miss a phrase of the sudden waterfall of mumbled words.
“Not a good sign, this sudden temperature drop. Mercury falling coinciding with a ghoul visiting. An angel announcing the end of my world. A talking spirit resembling my daughter. Or whatever else the fuck she is.” He turns to me. “Can you make a fire?”
His words belligerent, his heart sniffing me like a nosy creature rubbing its soft fur against my legs. Hoping for a pet. Daring me. Challenging me to a skirmish.
“No,” I say truthfully. And I really haven’t the faintest idea how to ignite the chopped-up tree corpse weighing me down. “Is there a secret spell, some hidden switch?”
Eldon takes over, with the hint of a smile, and shows me. Of course, I know what a fire looks like. I have seen flames, but my senses are not prepared for the spectacle of smoke and smell and light dancing — luminous, living shapes licking and swirling upward. Eagerly growing in size. Seamless from cute to feral. Loud cracks send up sparks and make me jump. The heat pushes me back like a fierce wind. My hands and arms half-lit by orange counters of night blues. Eldon’s face candescent as he looks at me straight for the first time. His eyes glow, the moisture reflecting the fire.
We are in a bowl of firelight. Everything has changed, come alive. The world has shrunken to a sphere with the fire at its core and us in its field. This is magic.
I learn something.
The spectral boundaries of the firelight determine my sight. It pushes away the myriad of night shades the garden grants me in the absence of daylight. The colours of the day again are a different set, void of the subtle tones. There is a limited bandwidth to each of the conditions. My experience, my abilities change with circumstance. With nearness. Now I am in the fire. Within its reach. I am also in Eldon’s reach. And I am within his. Visiting Eldon’s sphere. Our bandwidth is impacted by being together — mine and his. Even with all of the wider spectrum present, of course it has not disappeared, the larger part is out of reach. My consciousness is local, like matter.
“First strawberry, first fire,” Eldon says, still on his knees. Looking at me floating, hovering. Studying the grotesque shadows I paint on the wall. My hands dancing, catching fire.
“What else haven’t you seen?”
I drop my arms. I could make him a list. A very long list of all the things I know about but haven’t yet encountered. The many I never will. But it is too early for that. First things first. He will ask a question.
“How old are you, Liora?”
Here we go. I sit down on a wooden box. Half-lit like a hot moon. There is no avoiding this.
“Okay,”
I take a deep breath before I begin, making sure he is listening,
“I am made to resemble a twenty-five-year-old female. I am identical to a human up to the last three percent, give or take. I am from the last batch before production was shut down eight years ago.”
There are many more I ams but three should suffice to cause a contained riot. I look at my hands resting on my knees. Waiting for the response. For the disgust. The stupid remarks. The change in temperature of the energetic constellation. But Eldon is not most people.
“Give or take three percent?” he says, grinning. “You hungry? ’Cause I will faint if I don’t eat soon. You do eat, don’t you?”
He gets up and disappears into the house. No more than a hut leaning against the wall. I hear him stumble and mumble. Then he comes out again.
“Eight years,” he says, nodding. “No wonder. Cold duck and sauerkraut, can you handle that? Probably a first too, I reckon.”
His laugh is relaxed as he puts a metal tray next to the fire on the ring of stones. I think he means actual real duck. So yes, both are new to my taste buds. I will eat a dead bird from the pond. And weeks-old cabbage turned sour by a colony of tiny creatures. I hope he’s removed most of the feathers.
A mason jar, a tray, and two forks. He offers me the utensil on which he has staked a small amount of each. It drips, smells tangy, and I put it in my mouth. The texture of crunch and juiciness and velvety softness that accompanies the taste of fire and salt — and a symphony of things I cannot name — shuts my eyes.
“Ninety-seven percent human you are,” he says, laughing. “Liora the eight-year-old woman appreciates good food. That is the world’s best fuckin’ sauerkraut, isn’t it? I think it might be older than you.”
His fork hovers over the tray. His smile slowly melts away before he assembles himself a stack of shredded ferments and, with the help of a finger, tears off a bit of flesh.
“We’re all the same age.” I have said it without thinking. I meant we Genans are all fixed at twenty-five. And we stay there, not visibly ageing. But I hear the philosophical ring the words have as I say them. In some way we all are the same age.
“We?” he asks. But only after careful chewing, savouring and swallowing. He holds up the tray for my empty fork. I can’t eat and talk at the same time.
“Do you know where you are, Eldon?”
He pauses mid-chew, looks at me like he’s measuring something unseen. Then shrugs.
He swallows, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He leans forward, holding the fork like a compass needle.
“I asked first. Who’s we? And why now?”