The Egg of the World
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I got a lot of enjoyment from doing the Sydney Uni short course on form and voice. This year, I decided to tackle something a bit more specialised, and signed up for Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction, with Jennifer Breukelaar. I’ve had my eye on this course for a while, but it never seemed to be on offer — so as soon as I got the alert email that it was starting up again, I jumped on it.
One of our activities over the six-week period was working on an ongoing short story. Our prompt was three words: in my case, feather, bowl and cave. Aside from being in the general genre of ‘fantasy,’ we had no other specifications to follow. A blank page! The writer’s best friend (or worst enemy, depending who you ask).
The fun part of writing this piece was that I started (and, to be honest, continued) with absolutely no idea where it was going. There was no overarching concept or structure — I pretty much just wrote it line by line. Straight from the top of my dome, in the wise and immortal words of Bomfunk MC. And look, the piece probably does suffer from that decision — especially the ending, because frankly I was at a loss over how to end it once I got there. Still, there are things I like about it, and there’s no doubt I was excited when it turned out to be about… well, I won’t spoil it. Check out the full piece below.
Salome raised her hand and squinted into the sun. The copper disc sat low in the sky, but it still held heat. Her feet burned through the soles of her boots. Sweat prickled the back of her neck, made furrows in the dust that covered her face.
She looked down, turning the feather in her fingers. Gazer hawk, unless she missed her guess. Strange to find one this far west, away from the coast. But many things were strange of late. She let the feather go and watched the hot wind carry it up and away, out of sight.
Even at her brisk pace, it took Salome another three hours to reach the oasis, and by then the first stars had appeared, glinting dagger points in a canvas of deep purple. A few brittle-leafed doum palms hugged the edge of the waterhole.
At least, it had been a waterhole. Last year, the pool had been six feet by eight, a rough circle of mirrored blue. Now, only a skin of water remained, brown and brackish, fouled with the dead bodies of pygmy flies. Salome knelt, lowering her face as close to the water as she dared. It had the rank, musty smell of a mouse’s nest.
She leaned back on her heels. Overhead, the bare stalks of the palms rattled together. Dry, dry. Everything was dry. The thin air wicked the moisture from her mouth, made everything taste of dust and dead things. She pressed her lips together and stood, wincing at the stiffness in her joints. In the fading light, she could still make out the distant smear of the mountains, purple and mottled as a bruise.
Springs in the mountains, she thought, her hand sliding automatically to the empty canister at her belt. Fed from down deep, where the flies can’t reach.
Water, yes. Water to wet her throat, to wash the sand from her eyes, her ears. But what of her quarry? His flight was taking him north-east, towards the coast, and a detour now could ruin everything.
No choice. Water now, or death later.
Traveling at night was easier. The sun took the heat with it, and the chill air made her arms pimple with gooseflesh. Far above, the moon was a silver sickle, making the dunes seem to glow, white and luminous as snowfields.
Snow, she thought, smiling to herself. Pappy had spoken of it often. His people were from a place called the Ice Land, he said, where frozen water fell from the sky for half the year, and the sun never set. It had been years since Salome thought about snow. As with most of the old-timers, Pappy’s stories had dried up over the years, like fruit left too long in the sun. In that final year, before the breakbone fever had taken him, he had only stared at her when she asked for stories of the Ice Land. There had never been ice, he said. Only desert.
A few hours before dawn, Salome reached the foothills, where sand turned to cracked yellowish clay and rose to meet the slab-sided mountains. Long-haired white goats stared at her from rough outcrops of stone. She began to climb, hand over hand where the ground grew too steep to walk unaided. Now and again, the way turned to shallow, irregular stairs, their surface worn to oily smoothness by the sandpaper wind.
Halfway up the slope, Salome froze. Her eyes locked on the dark streak, barely visible against the grey of the rock’s surface. Only when she moved her head to just the right angle could she make out the telltale iridescence.
Impossible. Her eyes went automatically to the sky, but there was nothing but stars.
Breathing shallowly now, she surveyed the upper slope. The moonlight picked out more blotches, shimmering like tiny oil-slicks against the sand-blasted rocks. Leading upwards, towards…
There. A fissure, almost hidden inside a cleft of rock. And beside it, almost invisible, five dark streaks in the shape of fingerprints.
Her boots had been crafted for silence, and they made barely a whisper as she followed the goat-track upwards, towards the cleft. Columns of rock, scoured by windblown sand, flanked the path, and she flitted between their shadows, pausing now and again to check her backtrail, and the sky. Nothing but the goats, munching on tough grass and watching her with wary, slitted eyes.
The cave was a narrow fracture in the side of the mountain, half-hidden by stiff thornbushes and widening into a low bowl inside. Pale, fat tuber roots spidered the floor, the ceiling. As she moved deeper, the air grew moist, and the smell of bats made her cover her nose. Cracks in the walls let in shafts of moonlight, some wide, others fine as needles. Water trickled from invisible crevices, collecting in little hollows on the floor. Seeing it, she paused, aware of the dryness in her throat. Her tongue stuck to the roof her mouth.
Later, Salome told herself. After…
She found him pressed into a crack in the wall, so still she almost walked past him; would have, if she hadn’t felt the brush of his wingtip along her upper arm. She turned, the silver crescent blades already gripped in each hand. There was no fear in his eyes—only a weary resignation.
“Zadkiel,” she said, covering her surprise.
“Salome,” he replied, nodding. He was crouched on his heels, wings drawn up around him like a blanket. The sheathe at his side was still empty. She remembered knocking the seraph blade from his hand on the Corinth Flats, weeks ago. Blood, pearlescent in the dim light, seeped out from the wound in his shoulder. He had tried to stitch it closed, or someone had, but the sutures were raw and sloppy, the edges of the wound dark with infection. “I wondered how long it would take you to find me.”
She narrowed her eyes, shifting her weight onto her back foot. The blade handles were slick in her fists. No mistakes.
“Why did you run, then?”
He shrugged, unfolding his wings from the crevice. Salome took a step back, but he only smiled at her, a sad crinkling of his eyes. The left wing was badly broken, sticking out at an odd angle, dark feathers glued together with dry blood. He was done, she realised. The chase had broken him. There was no joy in the thought—only a grim satisfaction.
“Zadkiel,” she said again. “Angel of Mercy. For your crimes, you will be afforded none. Are you prepared to die?”
“Is any creature?”
She had already drawn her arm back for the killing stroke, but his words made her hesitate. Her heart hammered in her breast. No mistakes. Zadkiel would be her third, joining Eremiel and Sariel in the ranks of the slain. Few had killed so many. But even so… no mistakes.
“You are no creature,” she said. “A creature eats, sleeps. A creature feels. A creature can love.”
“Angels cannot love?”
“You broke the world!” Her voice came as a shout that echoed through the darkened tunnel, bouncing off the slimy stone walls. World, orld, orld.
The angel looked up at her. His eyes were gold, the pupils thin horizontal slashes, like the eyes of a goat. It made it hard to tell if he was really looking at her, or something else entirely.
“‘I looked, and beheld a white cloud,’” he said, and she had to lean closer to make out his words. His smell was lavender and frankincense, old leather and blood. “‘And upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.’”
Salome snarled, blade whipping up to press against the angel’s throat. A drop of blood, bright and shimmering as a diamond, appeared at the edge of the blade.
“‘And another angel came out of the temple,’” Zadkiel continued, eyes half closed. “‘Crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud: Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’”
“Monster,” Salome hissed, her voice blurred with tears. “You quote scripture at me?”
Now he opened his eyes, and this time there was no doubt. He was looking straight at her, his eyes like the gold leaf illuminating Pappy’s copy of the Great Book.
“You have read it,” Zadkiel said. “Many times, I know. But have you understood?”
“I understand everything I need to.”
“Not enough. The old must give way to the new, Salome. The land must lie fallow before the sowing.”
“Sowing,” she echoed, bitterness twisting at her lips. “What is there to sow, angel? The crops are all dead, or dying. There was corn, when I was a child. Now the children don’t remember what it looked like. Oranges; we had those, too. At sunset, you could see the glow rising off the groves. Gone. All gone. The olives are half the size they once were. Even the dates have shrivelled. There’s nothing left of this world but flies and bones. So tell me, angel… what is there to sow?”
He didn’t answer her, at first; only tilted his head and regarded her with those inhuman eyes.
“You are not the ones who will reap it,” he said at last. “The father must die to give way to the daughter. The old world must die to birth the new.”
“It didn’t die,” Salome said. “You and the rest of the host, you murdered it.”
“An execution,” he murmured. “You, Salome, you were not there to witness it. You never saw the stinking cities that belched death into the sky. The rivers choked with poison. The killing fields where forests once stood. The sin…” He shook his head, one perfect golden curl falling across his eyes. “Why do you seek to avenge something you never knew?”
“It was our birthright.”
“Birthright?” For just an instant, the angel looked surprised. “You were born to this world, the world of the cleansing. Born to the hunt.”
“A hunt that’s now finished,” Salome said.
“Yes. It is.” The angel lifted his chin, so his white throat lay bare to her blade. “‘I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.’”
“‘Neither shall there be any more pain,’” Salome said, after a moment. Her voice held steady now, her eyes dry. The old world must die to birth the new. Her world had already died. They lived in the death throes, now; her, and all the children yet to be born, forever and ever, amen.
“‘For the former things are passed away,’” the angel finished. “That serves for us, too, you understand. This is the time of the angels…but not forever. You may kill all of us, or we will kill you – it makes little difference. It will not bring back what was lost. This tired world is but an egg for the next.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps you’re right. I don’t understand half the things my father taught me in his stories, and my children may never understand mine. Perhaps the clock has run on too far, and can never be turned back.
“But if there is a new world coming, angel, there’s one thing I can make sure of. You won’t be there to see it hatch.”
The angel nodded, closing his eyes. He was still smiling when Salome cut his throat.