Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Posts

One

I have never left the village, not even as far as the ones to the east and west of us, the ones that deliver us our tithes, our due as part of the pact. Never in all my long, long life. We stay here and we will die here, that is the Vow we made, and with that I was content.

Until many years ago, not long after the famine that killed him off, I found an attic full of old books, and maps, in Caleb’s house. I knew without asking the others, not even my brother and sister, David and Rhona, that these were forbidden. More than even the books, the maps were my favourite things. For the first time I saw our small village, marked by Caleb with a circle of paled ink and I saw, like the hawk circling high above us, our world from above. How small it was. How much else there was outside it. The books too, showed wondrous things. Things that excited and frightened me in equal measure.

Even on the oldest maps, our valley is called the Dark Valley, with good reason. Towering mountain ranges close in above us and block the sun’s rays, so we live in almost perpetual shadow. Winter arrives early and is reluctant to leave, clinging on long after other villages further up and down the valley are enjoying the first blooms of spring. Instead, we keep the silvered outlines of trees and grass, as the morning frost hangs on. The village is squeezed into this cleft, cleaving to the steep slopes in two halves, separated by the river and a railway line that doesn’t pause for us. The river greedily occupies most of the small flat land we have, leaving just enough room for our fields.

I am a person without a past. I am a person without a name, though they call me Patient 12. I am a person without memories, except one, which they tell me is only a dream. The Voice knows when I have this dream and when I do, it sends me to the Plain. Last night I had the dream again. The Fallen man. He lands at my feet, in a twist of limbs and pooling blood. There is a pink globule on my shoe. People scream but it seems a long way off; then there are police; an ambulance;…

The light from the window brushed her face in soft yellow, and picked out the gold in her chestnut hair. She was reading a book, absorbed in its world and he thought she isn’t here, she’s somewhere else. The long black dress and black ribbon in her hair gave her an old-fashioned air, as if she belonged in a different time, and in the coffee shop surrounded by a uniform of jeans and a top, or young teens in a variety of sweatshirts and joggers, or office workers, like himself in a shirt and black trousers, she was a curiosity. It was more than her attire, though; he saw others cast sideways glances at her, taking her in. She wasn’t beautiful in the normal way; if he was being critical, he thought her nose was too long, but she had something interesting.   The teenage group were looking over and laughing, brave in their flock, but the others, men especially, were admiring. Or at least he was.