Witness

speculative fiction short

When they reached a distance at which Chem thought they would not be able to hear Coda’s screaming he turned to the girl picking her way across the broken stone behind him.

“My legs are very tired. Would you like to rest, dear heart?”

Rakkora smiled, her blunt, yellowed teeth still smeared with the juice of the blueberries they’d been eating. 

“You run all day, Chem. That's what Mother told me. You run to lead the longclaws away. How can you be tired?” She teased, poked him in the side. He grinned, then pointed towards the half-decomposed front of a building that had , he imagined, once been brightly painted and smelled delectable.

“Would you like to go to the bakery, Rakki? Maybe we can find something good to eat.”

She took his hand. Chem led her across the old pathway ancient hands had carved. He could not understand just who had made such a vast village as Kohaven. How could  one tribe have so many people that they would have needed an entire building just to house their bread? If not for the Tomes, he would never believe it.

They entered the grand hut, careful not to disturb the nesting piles of the owners. He made an offering to show they meant no trespass and the large orange and black speckled creature sniffed the dried meat, then snatched it up. Her pupils narrowed to slits in their fields of green. The kitten snorted, laying her head back down and returning to sleep.

“Orly-girl says yes?” Rakkora's dark eyes danced. 

“Yes, our Angel is pleased.” 

They left  the sentinel to her duty and stepped into the oven room. Honoring the ritual ensured their ally would alert them to the presence of any longclaws, though the cold-bloods rarely ventured this close to the tribe’s lands. Chem did not worry in any case - he carried his flint and his iron.

He sat on a flat stone by the doorway. Rakkora spent several minutes hunting for treats the Builders had left behind. He took his iron from his belt and laid it on the stone beside him, a warning to any who might attack them that his tribe was blessed not only by the kittens but also the First Angel. Chem’s mother Gineer had given him the iron. She said its name was Colt,  the very same iron carried by the First Angel Orly-girl, namesake of their bakery protectress. A fine story, but Gineer had not witnessed. The iron was old, but it could not be that old. This bakery was far younger than the iron Orly-girl used to help Queen Sophie battle the Witch, and it was in ruins. Colt must have been born much later, though long enough ago that the machines still listened to the tribe. 

That made it at least seven generations old. Gineer’s old-mothers taught her how to make stones that fly from the iron, and how to make old stones young again, and Gineer had taught Chem. Chem would teach his child all that he knew one day, if she lived long enough to witness. Many children did not.

As Rakkora grew disheartened, he slipped a bundle wrapped in longclaw hide from his fur coat into a nearby oven mouth. “Rakki, have you looked in this one?”

She frowned, thinking. “Yes, Chem. It is empty.”

“Are you sure? Perhaps you should look one time more.”

Rakkora plodded over and knelt to peer inside. The bakery, like everything the Builders left them, was designed for very tall men and women. They must have been giants. Chem stood tallest amongst the tribe’s men at exactly one and a half meters. Everything in the Builders’ world made him feel as a child. This oven sat low to the ground, and the girl had no trouble searching inside. She squealed as she found the surprise.

“A cake! There’s a cake, Chem!” she cried, opening the bundle to reveal the small, round loaf. “It’s warm!”

“They must have just been here! Perhaps next time we will meet them.”

Rakkora’s eyes went wide. “Oh , that would be fun! To see the other tribes. Mother says there are many.”

Chem nodded, but he had never witnessed such a thing. Rakkora’s mother Nikkera-Liz had told a great many stories. She believed them, so much so that she had left on a pilgrimage to the island where Queen Sophie defeated the Witch. What she intended to prove by doing so, Chem could only guess. She had made Chem promise to watch over Rakkora, but he would have done so anyway. He believed extracting the oath from him had been her way of absolving herself of the guilt at leaving behind her daughter. He sighed, wondering if the girl understood what had happened. No, of course not.

“Go on and eat that up before it gets cold.”

She took a big bite. “There’s raspberries in this cake!” 

He knew. He’d helped Surgan and Travek pick them after they found the wild cereal plants that Surgan and Coda and the other women ground to cook the cake. He had marveled at the process- the plants stopped listening to the tribe even before the machines did, and a tribe that did not grow baked little. Rakkora’s beautiful smile said it was worth all the trouble, and that was something he could witness. Even before Nikkera-Liz had left, Rakkora had been the whole tribe’s child.

“Will you tell me a story, Chem?” The girl savored each bite as if it were pizza. Chem did not know what pizza was, but he knew from the Tomes that it had been a favorite food of the Queens.

“What would you like to hear, dear heart?” Chem pulled one of the Tomes from his fur coat and leafed through the ancient pages. He could scarcely see the symbols scrawled in neat, spidery writing on every line, but he was not a Reader. There were no Readers anymore - Rakkora’s mother’s mother Jesikera had been the last person in the tribe to whom the words would speak. Chem didn’t mind. He knew the stories in the Tomes by heart, having heard them from Gineer and Nikkera-Liz and the Priestesses for his whole life.

“Queen Sophie battles the Witch,” Rakkora said.

Of course - it was her favorite story. It was everyone’s favorite story. Chem pretended to read, and for the next moments the two of them were transported in time and space to the far away place across the North Sea.

He told Rakkora of how the Queen and her brave Knight Abelard chased the Witch from their home, a grand city on a Hill called Chapel, in a land the Tomes named Carolina. They followed the Witch across a sea so vast that it made the North Sea seem as a rain puddle to make sure she could not poison the land against the tribes. They came to a place called Copenhag, after which their village of Kohaven had been named. They pursued the Witch north to one island, then another, before Queen Sophie challenged her to a contest for the favor of the gods.

Sophie danced a blood-dance, making a great sacrifice. Her Knight bore witness, as one must do to ensure Truth. The Witch grew so furious by the beauty of the Queen’s dance that she attacked Sophie, knowing no one could ever move with more grace. As they fought the Queen called out for help. The gods sent an Angel, Orly-girl, to strike the Witch down with her iron. The Queen was gravely wounded by the Witch’s claws, but the First Angel and her Knight bore her back to the land of Carolina where a sorceress used the ancient magics called Science to heal her. The Queen awoke so overjoyed that the gods restored her that she professed her love for the sorceress, Rachel-Liz. Then they honored the tribes by having many children.

Chem always found this part of the story amusing, both because he didn’t understand how two women might have a child with one another and because the idea of any woman having more than one child, let alone ‘many,’ struck him as absurd. Only the Priestesses had both been born to one woman, but the two of them arrived on the same day. The tribe considered them to be a blessing of the gods, sent to guide them towards the old ways that Queen Sophie had set out for them.

Rakkora asked the same questions she always did. Chem answered as he always did. What was it like in the Queen’s castle in Carolina? Beautiful, of course - a palace that the Builders made for her and her children to be ever safe in, every room more filled with wonderful art and warm clothing and delicious food. And kittens? Of course, many kittens to watch over all her many children. Rakkora asked about the Pilgrimage the Queen’s tribe had taken, and this tale too he told her.  The Tomes spoke little of these times, but the Priestesses spoke for the ages. Chem believed the Queen must have been very old by then, because her children’s children for a dozen generations set sail on a great ship across the same vast sea Sophie had crossed. They arrived in Copenhag and lived in the city with the Builders, from whom they learned all the magics of Science and Machines, plants and reading and more.

“But where did the Builders go?”

Chem smiled. If only he knew! As always, he told her they left this city to build an even grander one, so that Queen Sophie and the Sorceress might one day return to the Hill called Chapel in its splendor. Even the Priestesses made it a point not to dwell on the way such a tale unraveled when plucked at overlong by curiosity’s fingers.

Rakkora yawned. Midday brought her great weariness, the soul of a kitten living inside her. She crawled into his lap. He stroked her hair and sang to her until she dozed. HChem had a warrior’s strength, but she was a child only in her mind, so once she began to snore he set her down wrapped in their fur coats. 

He stood watch as the sun moved through the sky. Orly-girl left to hunt. Once the kitten returned with a neck-wrung wolf in her jaws for her own children, Chem decided they ought to return. One way or another Coda’s ordeal would be done. He would meet his grief or his joy as it came. He would Witness.

“Dear heart, it is time to go home.” He stroked her cheek. Rakkora woke smiling. She always smiled. He was glad she knew little and less of the harder side of this world.

“Chem, will Mother be there when we get back? I miss her.”

“Not yet, but soon.” He gave her a hug.  “I almost forgot, she gave me a gift for you.”

Rakkura’s eyes widened at the sparkling golden object he withdrew from one of his fur coat’s many pockets. He held it out to her and she turned it over in her hands.

“What is it?”

“It is a bracelet, Rakki. Here, this is how you put it on.”  

He guided her hand into its loop and pressed the ends together as Surgan had taught him when he’d brought her the strange object. He’d been digging for water-roots in a field of stones, since the metal tubes often led on to the builder’s wells. Instead, he’d found a very old wooden box. He and Travek cracked it open.

To their shock, they’d found a boneman inside, so long dead that even his clothing was only scraps. He had with him a golden ring, which Travek gave to Surgan, and the strange bracelet. Chem had shown the bracelet to Nikkera’-Liz and she’d explained to him the ancient purpose of such an object, and now Chem passed the story to Rakkora.

“It is named Watch. The Builders would Watch the days and the nights always, because they worried so much about it. That is why we do not Watch time. We only Witness, because we know that the future is not promised. We have only this moment. They forgot this.”

Rakkora kissed the bracelet, then took his hand. “I shall name him Witness and I will never forget.”

Chem said led her back the way they’d come. They waved goodbye to Orly-girl and made their way towards Kohaven. As they approached, he saw Surgan standing by the building the tribe shared as a home. There were rooms for two score or more families, but most had been empty for generations. Surgan walked towards them. Her hands were bloody, and her clothes. Her eyes told no tales. Chem’s heart hammered. Then she smiled. “A good day, Chem. Breathe deep the sweet air.”

He let go of a long-held breath. Rakkora showed off her new bracelet to the woman as Surgan shepherded the girl after her. “Oh, my, that is so pretty, Rakki! Come, let us wash up for dinner.” Surgan gave him a look over her shoulder.

“Why do you still stand here, foolish man? Your wife waits for you.”

Chem ran to their hut within the big house. When he saw Coda in their bed, wrapped in blankets, his heart finally calmed. The future was not promised, but some futures were still worth hoping for.

“You have been gone a long time,” Coda scolded, but her face was gentle. She shifted and a tiny bundle moved against her chest. Chem’s knees were not warrior strong just now.

“I wanted to be sure.” 

He did not say of what, everyone knew only a woman must make a child. A man could only complicate a ritual already fraught with peril.

“You can come closer, we won’t bite you.” Coda teased. 

Her face glowed, but he saw a bones deep weariness underneath. At nearly thirty winters she was not a young woman. Most in the tribe believed Chem would return this day to an empty home. Yet the gods smiled upon him.

He stroked the broad head of their kitten Klausi, named for the first of his kind. The sleek, powerful Angel moved to permit him entry then circled up in the doorway of their hut. Chem sat beside his wife and looked into the face of their child. Their daughter. Coda settled against him and the two of them witnessed her existence.

“She is strong. She will do many great things for the tribe, my Chem,” Coda said. “Thus her name shall be Hope.”

Chem smiled. He did not need to tell his wife that with only one woman in ten born to the tribe capable of bearing children - and only once in their lifetime - there would not be many left to witness what their child would do if she defied the odds and lived past her first years. He did not tell her that unless they found other tribes there would likely not even be a husband for her. Surgan’s boy had died last winter and the other women were either too old or, like Rakkora, had never had their moon’s blood to begin with. He did not tell her that the  tribe would likely end with them.

Instead Chem kissed his wife’s brow.  He kissed the brow of his daughter, caressing her soft cheek with his rough finger. The child’s dark, intelligent eyes stared at it, then rose to search his face. She smiled.

“Hope is all I have ever wanted, dear heart. I think it is the perfect name.”

Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow he and Travek would head north, to look for the other tribes.