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In, please give me a song.
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Mar 28, 2017 06:27
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| # ¿ Jan 19, 2025 14:32 |
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Deucalion’s Brood (1200 words) -- Armenia 2009 Sister, they will call me a murderess, a madwoman. They will call this a treachery so vile that none can comprehend my motives. None of them will guess that I did it because of you. Mistress Amber might have remembered, but she is long dead now, and I wear her rings on my fingers. It is dark and cold in the room where the ancient ones sleep. It is the hour after midnight, and I am alone with them. When we were children we imagined them as tiny infants, floating in glass jars. In reality each one is smaller than a mote of dust. All that can be seen are the vials of water in which they are suspended. It is only through seeing-machines that we can know they are there at all. Yet it is they who impart meaning to our entire existence. Beyond the walls of our fortress home, the storms crawl across the lifeless earth and the seas vomit poison into the air. For centuries our Sisterhood has guarded this place, awaiting the coming day of resurrection. Without us, the candle of humanity will be snuffed out at last, and silence will fill the universe until the end of time. That was how it was taught to us in the seminary in North Wing. My earliest distinct memories are of that time, when you and I first studied together. Before that I recall only generalities that could apply equally to any of my sisters. I was born from the sacred crucible; I was nursed in an incubation chamber; I was given a name. There are events that I remember, but I cannot say if they happened to me or to one of the other girls. That is how we were raised in the Sisterhood. We are of one blood, one soul, the matrons taught us. Each of us is created from the blood of the same ancient Mother. We are made in the crucible and return to the crucible when we die. Even our names are recycled and passed on to the next generation. No individual is ever distinguished from the whole. Ah, but then there was you, my sister—with your twisted leg and your strange, furtive smile. Our genetic material is supposed to be perfect, but something had gone wrong in the process of your creation. You were sick often. It was when I began taking care of you that I first saw myself as a separate being. In school you struggled, so I swapped my slates for yours when the matron wasn’t looking. When our work was done we would slip away and explore the borders of our tiny world together. Late at night we would climb onto the fortress roof to watch the thunderstorms clash on the distant plain. Once we saw one of the ancient weather-machines flying overhead, carrying out its long task of undoing the damage to the planet’s atmosphere. “I feel very small,” you said when you saw it, and I put your trembling hand into mine. Sometimes I wondered if the woman who had my name before me had shared a similar bond with the woman who came before you—if Sister Rose and Sister Maeve had found and lost each other many times through the centuries. But that was only a girl’s fancy. I know now that your memory will die with me. I still smile when I remember the last night we spent together: the evening light on the rooftop, the huge black thunderhead rising up to swallow the sun. When the door blew shut and locked behind us, we laughed, putting on brave faces for each other. All through the night we huddled under a narrow overhang, clinging tight to each other, our clothes soaked by the rain. In the morning you were coughing and pale. Your body could not weather the elements as well as mine. I was trying to wring the water from your dress when Mistress Amber opened the rooftop door and found us. I counted the days that you were kept in the infirmary. I knew that if I asked to see you it would only make things worse. On the ninth day, Mistress Amber called me to her office after the morning meditation. “Sister Rose has been transferred to the Peak to finish her education,” she said. “She left yesterday morning.” And so it was done. You were gone from the fortress forever. You would spend your days in that lonely watchtower on the mountaintop, living with less than a dozen others, monitoring the progress of the ancient weather-machines. “You may feel hurt now,” Mistress Amber continued, “but in time you will realise that this was for the best. You know why such relationships are forbidden. Individuation is a threat to the Collective; and a threat to the Collective is a threat to the Great Task.” “But why?” I asked, forcing myself not to cry. “Why should it be wrong for us to love our sisters?” A distant look came into the Mistress’s eyes. “Because this world is not for us, child,” she said. “We are only vessels for the survival of the ancient ones. So it has always been. So it must always be.” There was nothing I could do then but carry on. I returned to that half-life I had known before I met you. I learned to see myself only as a part of the whole. I excelled in my studies, and in due course I traded my white novice’s robes for the blue velvet of a full Sister. Decades went by, and my youthful follies were forgotten. When Mistress Amber died, the other Mistresses chose me to replace her. I have been in every way a model of our Sisterhood. And yet there was a sadness that always remained deep inside, marking out the contours of my true self. Last week a message came from the Peak: Sister Rose has passed away. Her body and her name will be returned to the crucible. Something happened to me then. It was like all the years since you left had been a dream, and now I was waking. I knew at once what I was going to do. As a Mistress, I have certain responsibilities beyond those of my sisters. It was not difficult to gain access to the chamber of the ancient ones. Disabling the temperature controls and the alarms was harder, but I have done it. Now all that is left is to wait. They will call me a murderess, a madwoman. Even if they make the connection to your death, they will simply say I was driven insane by grief. But my grief for you faded many years ago. I have done this for the sake of the next sister to carry your name—and the next, and the next after that. I have done it so that they may inherit the world. It is dark and cold in the room where the ancient ones sleep. By morning it will be warm, and my sisters will find me here amongst the dead. I do not know what they will do with me then.
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Apr 2, 2017 12:03
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