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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Arch

Warm winter winds blowing and blowing and blowing without end. A real snow eater. You can almost imagine spring was coming with the warm days and the melt, though no one in these parts is fooled. This is but a respite from the cold, which will return soon enough. Worth it, so long as more snow comes with it. 

The wind is like a breath of relief after the cold and darkness of December, when everything seemed to huddle in on itself. The days are getting longer now, the weeks when there seemed to be only five hours of daylight in the past. The wind feels a part of that change, though it isn’t. Just more weather, always a fixation in these parts. 

Further west, closer to the mountains, they have these winds every other week to hear them talk. How can you stand the cold out there, they say, with a smug grin. People here respond with a smugness of their own: these weak westerners who don’t have the strength to manage a proper winter. That is the logic of winter in these dominions. Pride that one can endure such privations (and worse if it comes!) and insistence that others elsewhere face much worse, that really this is all not so bad. And it is true, that such winds only intermittently find their way to the Quarter, while the cold northern ones can always find their way in. There are days when you can drive west and watch the snow in the fields go from glistening in the sun, to sagging, to puddles and bare patches.  

The snow melts into tiny rivers, carving pathways down laneways, turning solid overnight as the temperature drops. The next day repeats itself, except the water flows over yesterday’s ice and adds another layer to it. Soon enough the low spots everywhere are treacherous, as are the places where the snow has been packed down by many footsteps, the warmth transforming it from snow to ice, unbreakably hard. Walking becomes a high-risk activity. You learn to go with the ice, to let yourself slip and glide rather than catching yourself. 

Evenings coming home, you pause to look at the sky. A habit. Always good to see what’s coming. To the west there is a curving line of clouds, dark and ominous. A great wall, beyond which the sky is clear and blue. Above the sky is full of scattered clouds, as dark as the western arch. There is no rain or snow in them, just the promise of warm winds. Colder days are further out on the horizon.  

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Songs of Destruction

The end is coming, closer every day. The entropy of all things, heavy as gravity, pulling apart. The knowledge sits there now, present in a way it wasn’t before. Spots on the skin, grey in the hair, unexplained aches that linger. How strange to arrive at this place and without any warning. 

Things mostly haven’t worked out. What can you do? Rage against the dying light, they say. Flail about, a great performance, demanding change. Tell everyone about what is owed, what is due you for having existed in this life. Let them have it. Tear the edifices down to the fabric of existence, only to find we’re just left with ourselves. Poor company. 

The ruins rise out of the jungle, stones carefully placed together some hundreds of years ago, still standing. A triumph of engineering and imagination. Takes the breath away still to stand on those stairs and realize that centuries ago others did the same, just going about their lives. Until they didn’t.  

Everyone looks for the cataclysm that ended these ancient places, but mostly people just drifted away. Things changed. Crises arrived at inopportune times and rulers failed in the ways that rulers do and thousands became hundreds became dozens. The edifices that remained became too much to maintain and those people left too. For other places and other lives. Maybe less wondrous ones, maybe ones with more hardship. Somewhere they could build again. 

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Blank Pages

She was new in those parts, having arrived the summer before. A smiling presence around town, people were drawn to chat with her. Asking her how she was finding her first winter and life in town. She was used to those questions now and understood how to answer them. What was expected of her. The first required a complaint about the cold, which drew knowing chuckles and comments about how she would get used to it in time. This would usually lead into further talk about the weather, how it had been recently, what they could expect in the coming days. 

The second she had learned to respond with a comment about how friendly and helpful everyone was. They were not particularly interested in how she was adjusting to life here as much as how she perceived them. Sometimes this would lead to talk of what had brought her to these parts in the first place, which she’d come to recognize as potentially treacherous waters. For many it was just curiosity, as well as the hope for reassurance that the world was worse elsewhere and they had made the right choice in staying where they were. Others had concerns which they weren’t willing to give voice to, at least in her presence, but which lurked in the background of the conversation. Sometimes it would slip out, unexpectedly. We need more like you, who do things the proper way. Those ones she knew to avoid in future. 

She didn’t lie to people, but nothing she said was exactly true. It was what they expected to hear and she was happy to be put into the particular shape that fit into their puzzle of the world. Being what was expected was its own kind of armour. She could disappear in plain sight. And that was what she wanted, to exist in a place where she could leave all her history behind. As they became more acquainted, people would ask her about that history. Her family, her siblings, friends from home. She would answer in generalities. Yes, she had parents, a sister, nieces. If they noticed she had no pictures of them displayed no one mentioned it. Would they be visiting soon was usually the direction the conversation tended. Have you told them about us and these parts being the real question, left unspoken. Maybe some day, was all she would say on that. 

They accepted that. They accepted everything she said, with whatever assumptions they had about where she was from and what that entailed left mostly unsaid. Basically they thought her life had been much like theirs, just poorer. A campground without amenities. Some of them judged her for that, but mostly they had no real conception of what life was like beyond their door. How could they? 

That would have bothered some. They would have wanted to be known, to be seen, to be understood as they understood themselves. She preferred otherwise. Here was a place where she was free to write her own story.  

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Dress Accordingly

Winter is the most honest of seasons. Intent laid bare to the bone. The universe is unforgiving, this part of it especially. Dress accordingly.  

The people who talk of the magic of a white Christmas, the wonder of snow, do so because it is infrequent where they are from. A rare occurrence whose arrival does seem portentous. And like any spell, it will pass and the world will be set to rights. Here we know better. Here we know the winter is a conqueror and we its subjects, that the wind has a bite to draw blood. 

Which is not to say there is not beauty to be found, but it is a forbidding kind. There is a silence that comes with snow, especially as it is falling, a hush settling upon the world. Everything distant and still. The way ahead is unbroken, no footprints to guide us. We can look back and watch our footsteps slowly vanish. 

That is the truth of the universe. All our furious, burning effort will come to nothing in the end. All our monuments will be covered over and our words will be forgotten beneath the swirling drifts of time. And we will find ourselves distant and still. 

There is a comfort in that understanding. All that matters is who we are now and what we do together. Come closer. Stay warm. 

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Red Ribbon

He first glimpsed the sister through the trees that surrounded the Faulkenbourg Place. Since moving there it had become his habit to walk between the rows, starting from the laneway that led to the road and ending when he had circumnavigated the property and returned to the other side of the lane. The yard itself was quite large with extensive pens for cattle, grain bins and storage sheds for equipment, all in various states of disrepair. Thistle and brome grass overgrew the lanes between the corrals and buildings. They grew between the trees too, but he quickly wore down a trail. He liked being among the trees, unable to see to the farthest horizon as seemed the case anywhere else he stood in these parts. There was a hush there, a quiet, as if he’d journeyed to another place.  

The wind was blowing – it was always blowing – bending the branches and fluttering the leaves, shifting things from light to shadow and back again. She was in the field just beyond the trees, passing through the stalks of wheat with a surprising grace, a red ribbon trailing from her hair. She didn’t seem to notice him, moving alongside the trees toward him. He called out to her, not wanting her to think he was lurking in the shadows with ill intent. The wind gusted, carrying his words away, and she didn’t hear and passed on her way.  

He saw her several more times, usually in the field beside the trees, though once at the far end of the row he was in. It seemed difficult to believe she could fail to notice his presence, but she never acknowledged him. She was young, maybe eighteen or so, and he assumed she was the daughter of one of the neighbours. When one of the brothers across the way asked how he was getting on, he mentioned his walks and how much he enjoyed them and added that there must be someone in his family who felt the same for he always saw her walking the trees. The brother could not hide his dismay at the statement and changed the subject. This piqued his interest and he began to ask around town about the Faulkenbourg Place. It seemed odd to him that the yard for what had obviously been an extensive operation had been allowed to fall into such a state. 

People were reluctant to speak on the matter. They would mutter something about the sisters and then talk of something else. It was very unlike the locals who seemed willing to gossip about anything, even with a stranger like him. It was only when he came across a story in an old newspaper while doing some unrelated research that he realized what they wouldn’t tell him. Hazel and Abigail, the McIntyre sisters had both loved Sven Faulkenbourg. He’d chosen the younger and in a fit of jealousy Hazel had murdered her sister, drowning her in a slough. At the time it was seen as a terrible accident and Sven had gone to Hazel for comfort while he mourned. One thing had led to another and soon they were to be married. 

They lived with Sven’s parents until they could build a place of their own, the very house he was renting. Sven discovered a red ribbon in Hazel’s things. There had been strands of red ribbon found under Abigail’s fingernails when she had been pulled from the slough. It had been noted at the time, but more as a curiosity. When Sven found the ribbon he understood what had happened and he strangled Hazel with it. He was hanged, one of the last to receive capital punishment in those parts and his parents moved away, unable to bear being in the house and on the land where such a tragedy had happened. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Winter Comes Early to the Outpost

Snow covered over the road ahead and the stubbled fields that surrounded them, still drifting down from above. No one had come this way in some time for theirs were the first footprints to mark the trail and the snow was already to their ankles. The few trees they passed – short and shrubby, like all the trees in these parts – still had most of their leaves. Winter’s arrival had been sudden and unexpected, especially for the straggling band of travellers with thin coats and thinner shoes.  

On their journey north – flight would be more accurate – they had camped out in the shelter of those sorts of trees, for they tended to cling to lowlands where water gathered. Water, which had been problematic for much of their travel, would be no worry tomorrow. The creeks would be flowing again. But none of them were in any mood to spend a night in a snowbank. They were already cold and soaked through and it would be hard work to get any fire started to warm themselves. 

That was why when they came upon the smattering of houses that didn’t quite constitute a village, one of which included an inn of the old style, two stories and square, they went inside without any discussion among themselves as to whether it was wise. It wasn’t, but neither was staying outdoors for a winter’s evening in their thin coats and pants that they had hoped to have more time to find proper replacements for. The place smelled of mildew and disrepair, but they supposed so did they. A few locals, sipping harvest ale, gave them a careful once over, registering who and what they were, before returning to their muttered conversations.  

The innkeeper sized them up with a skeptical eye, weighing whether their money was worth the trouble. How many rooms, was all he said. They asked for the cost and there followed a back and forth that ended with an agreement for two rooms for the six of them, with meals included. Drinks would be extra. A girl was summoned from the back and sent out into the snow to let whoever would be cooking know. They looked longingly at the heavy coat she shrugged on. It was an hour before dinner appeared, during which they sipped at peppery harvest ales they couldn’t afford and tried to ignore the stares from the locals. The girl brought a great pot of barley soup, ladling out a bowl for each of them, and handing them day old bread to soak it up with.  

She looked at them with a fierce interest that worried them, sitting on a stool behind the bar, clearly wanting to speak with them. The innkeeper noticed as well and angrily banished her upstairs to ready their rooms.  The other locals kept their interest better disguised, though their eyes kept flicking in their direction and their talk grew lower and lower. One man left and returned twenty minutes later, which caused them some consternation. But they reassured themselves that the constabulary wouldn’t have a station in this place and it was doubtful anyone was willing to endure the weather to go summon one. They hoped. 

After they’d eaten four of them went up to wash and ready for bed while two other remained below to drink another ale and keep an eye on the locals and ensure no one had any plans. They retired upstairs only when the tavern had emptied and the innkeeper was cleaning up. Though they felt confident the constabulary hadn’t been summoned they still took shifts sleeping, one person in each room keeping watch.  

They left before dawn, slipping out onto the empty road in the darkness. The snow had stopped and again theirs were the first footprints to mark the way, which would make them easy to track but couldn’t be helped. They had reached the edge of the village when the girl appeared, dressed for travel in her thick coat and heavy boots. I’m going with you, she said, her breath clouding the air. They argued with her, telling her there was no place for her among them, that where they were going was no place for a girl like her. She let them speak their piece and repeated her words, adding: you won’t make it without me. There was a certainty to her gaze they could not argue with. 

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Summer Days and Summer Nights Are Gone

With the latest troubles down south an intermittent straggle of newcomers had begun to arrive in town. Most passed through on their way to other places. A few decided to stay longer, attracted by the cheapness of the rent, but when they struggled to find regular work they would move on, rarely lasting more than a month or two. The latest arrivals, a couple, had taken up residence in the Dunning place on the outskirts of town at the beginning of June. Most of the newcomers ended up there. It was a dilapidated eyesore that everyone agreed should have been torn down years ago. Instead Marvin had halfheartedly tried renting it for years without investing any in improvements and he treated these southern exiles as an unexpected windfall. 

The couple mostly kept to themselves and the locals didn’t press them. Their politeness, for which they were famed, was an armour to hold strangers at a careful distance. They were nice, kind even, helpful when asked, but they did not intrude into the couples’ lives and seemed to demand the same. Don’t tell us of your struggles and your hurts, we have our own and you are the cause. That was never said, but the couple felt the weight of it all the same in the way they were accepted but never quite welcomed anywhere they went. 

Summer went by with them still in the Dunning place. They kept the yard well, fixing the fence and planting a garden, enjoying its fruits. The man took a job in the grocery store, part-time, and they both had hours at the greenhouse. The woman was a teacher it was said, but obviously not accredited for these parts. The man’s former career was unknown, but it was obvious he hadn’t done farm work or anything like that, so no one was willing to trust him with their equipment. He was a good worker, Don said, and he wished he had more hours for him. 

Night began arriving earlier and earlier, a chill coming with it. Morning frost would be white on the lawn when they rose. The couple was still there, much to everyone’s surprise. They remarked on the abruptness of the change – the week prior had been blanketed with summer warmth – and were met with shrugs that said that time was over now.  Well, they knew about that, all too well. Everyone worried about how they would handle the winter if they were staying on. A few solicitous folks told them they should see about buying a good winter coat before the weather really turned. The couple assured them they had brought adequate winter clothes with them and the locals assured them they were wrong.   

Mornings the couple would walk together north down the gravel road that led from their house to the new elevators, those towering concrete structures, the tallest buildings for a hundred kilometres or more. During the summer they had marvelled at the crops in fields on either side of the road, at the brightness of the day even so early in the morning. Now their breath clouded the air and they went out later, waiting for the sun to rise. There was only stubble in the fields now, harvest finished. Overhead geese flew in formation, heading south. They would stand and watch them until they disappeared in the sky and then turn their backs to keep going on. 

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Everyone in Their Right Lane

She came into town at the end of summer, harvest in full swing in the fields. Come speak your grievances to me, she said, and the people came for they had many. It seemed it had been so long since someone had actually listened. She had an easy way about her, a smile that said she understood just what the problem was and how it might be solved. No matter the concern her answer was the same: it was not their fault and it certainly wasn’t hers. The dominion government that ruled them from far away – elected yes, but not legitimate – acted against them in all ways and needed to be cast aside. And there were others, newcomers from even further away, who had come here but did not belong and were creating trouble wherever they went.  

She was not the first to come this way, not by a long shot. Fifty years now, another gleaming politician coming to town filled with answers to the same problems. You would have thought people would get tired of it, but they liked being listened to, even if the problems they all promised to fix still persisted. It was an acknowledgement that they existed and to some extent mattered. She liked giving them someone to blame. It was largely forgotten she had been that way in years before, telling everyone their freedoms were under threat. Now that she was in charge, the tune had changed somewhat. Though she still told them they were right, this couldn’t stand, and these others must be dealt with. 

Once this had been a great land, they said, and she agreed. That is why we must hold on to everything we have tightly so we don’t lose more of it. The only way to do that, she said, was that everyone had to stay in their lanes and keep to their proper place. The dominion government should stay out of their lives. Town councils too. The only proper government was hers, because only she understood what was needed in these perilous times. Also, kids were getting weirder and weirder, talking in their indecipherable slang, dressing strangely and deciding they were one thing and then another. They especially needed to stay in their lane and avoid unnatural inclinations. Obviously outside influences were the cause of that, so books would have to be banned and curriculum restored to rote memorization and oaths of loyalty to better protect minds so easily influenced. 

That was needed everywhere in truth. People couldn’t be trusted to stay in their lanes either, as the few who appeared at the complaint sessions who disputed what she said made clear. The only way to ensure less government intrusion in peoples lives, which everyone agreed was the goal, was for everyone to do as they were told. It did not need to be said who would do the telling. Most of those who attended were happy to follow along. It was easier and felt safer to have someone who could tell them how the world was and why it was right and clever for them to do exactly what she said. 

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

The Dead Can Never Die

The wizards with their orbs and spells, their alchemy and astrology, and other arcane knowledge that only they had the learning to truly understand, or so they claimed, had spent years perfecting their spellcasters. Their ultimate achievement, long sought after. A spell that could raise other spells, that would not dissipate, but would instead remain integral across all time, capable of casting any spell.  

This required collecting all the learning on spellcraft in existence, collating it and rendering it accessible to the spellcaster. There were mistakes along the way. How could there not be? There were endless errors in spell books – wizards were secretive creatures after all and often slipped in errata to ensure only they would be the ones to know the spells. That didn’t even include the mistranslations, for spells had been taken from one language to another and back again over the years, and a spell that had begun transforming an eel into a princess now turned a prince into a frog. 

Still the wizards claimed the spellcaster worked. Not only did it work, but it could learn. Through trial and error it could correct the many errors that had entered into the literature. Any task, any potion, any craft or artistry, all could be subsumed by the spellcaster. Here then was the power of the old gods long vanished from all realms.  

Rulers and other elites were naturally intrigued by the promise. They had long been allied with the wizards. Together they had transcended all earthly domains of money and power and now lived in constant terror of losing it all. The promise of the spellcaster was the answer to all their dreams, for with it you no longer needed people. 

They were a problem, it had to be admitted. Those testy subjects who were constantly insisting upon the obligations they believed their betters owed them instead of being properly awed in the face of their obvious excellence and superior wisdom. Most had proven quite uninterested in the wizards’ last great idea, exchanging their minted coins for a magical Repository of Value, no matter how many times it was demonstrably proven to them that this was a far better thing than actual coin. It even had other uses, though the wizards were somewhat vague on those. They had many questions about the spellcaster as well and did not seem especially convinced by all the answers they were given.  

The wizards assured all that they would come around in due time. Having conquered all realms they turned to death itself, claiming they could escape our mortal bonds with eternal life. Not with the usual rubbish elixirs and potions, which everyone knew to be the work of charlatans. The spellcaster would be handy here for it would be able to invent new spells that would generate fresh organs and fresh blood to renew an aging body. The first few attempts at this went poorly. It seemed the wizards were stealing organs and blood from paupers and declaring them newly generated, causing the kind of scandal that brought the whole spellcaster project into disrepute. 

This led to much grumbling on all sides, so a new approach was needed. Time was the problem, it was declared. Its ceaseless march wore down everyone and everything. The answer was to hold the world still, keep everyone in their right place, unmoving. If they did everything correctly, they might even be able to wind time back on itself, reset events and restore the glorious past when everything had felt new and life had seemed limitless. Soon it would be. The spells were cast. The world was wound back like a resetting clock, the whole fabric of society groaning as countless numbers were crushed beneath those gears. 

The rulers applauded the wizards for their efforts. They complimented each other for their newly youthful vigour, though secretly each thought the others appeared much the same. Everywhere they looked there was stillness. No wind stirred. They all told themselves how wondrous it all was, how for the first time ever they felt at peace, all their desires met. Even as they did they found themselves looking over their shoulders. Old habit, they told themselves, one they would soon shake. But they couldn’t, for there was a sound somewhere that they couldn’t quite place, no matter how much they cast about in search of it. Like the roar of a waterfall heard at a distance. 

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Hermit of the Hills

Nels came to the Quarter with three others in the early years of the century trying his luck on a quarter section. The other three sent for their families after they had broken the land and thrown up a shack, later ordering homes from the Eaton’s catalogue when they had money from a couple of harvests and their second quarter was handed over. Even after he got his second quarter Nels continued in the same shack, building a more permanent structure only after his first decade on the land. Many of the neighbours said this was little better than the shack he had been living in, though it did at least have a wood floor and a cellar. 

Nels was always a friendly presence, happy to chat with anyone in town, available to help with harvest or any work really. His neighbours looked forward to his regular visits to spend an evening at cards and he called three or four families once a week. As more settlers arrived, people wondered when he would marry. Many of the other bachelors who came in those years did find wives, either among the locals or from their original homes. Nels did not though, never going with any of the local girls, even when others encouraged him to. After a time all that sort of talk stopped as people accepted things for what they were.  

He never left the Quarter after homesteading, not even during the ten years of drought when so many others abandoned their farms, some not even leaving word or a forwarding address. More left with the second great war, travelling to far-flung lands and more still in the years after. The automobile was coming in wide use then and highways were being built. There were new opportunities everywhere. The Quarter was somehow both larger and smaller as a result. Fewer homesteads dotted the landscape and the farms were getting larger, while it was now possible to travel across most of its length in the space of an afternoon.  

People saw less of Nels as the years went on. Several of the families he stopped in to play cards with had moved on after the war. Tractors and other machines meant that agriculture was no longer a communal activity, though he did still drive truck for a couple of neighbours. Folks started talking about him differently too, though he hadn’t changed much. He was a man of his era, a time now past, when people were willing to throw away the lives they had been living, leave it all behind and take a chance on a far away land with no guarantees. Everyone was settled now, knowing nothing else and of the place in a way that Nels, and those who had arrived with him, could never be.  

At some point people began calling him the Hermit of the Hills, though he was always about and his half section was not especially hilly. Older siblings told younger ones about the terrible things that would happen if you wandered onto his land or into his house, which hid a portal to another demon-filled world in the cellar. If Nels knew about these stories he never said. He got diabetes in his later years and one of his feet took an infection which he neglected. Doctors took the leg to try to save him, but it was too late.  

He willed his land to one of the neighbours, the son of one of the men he’d come out with. Nels had always called on them for visits, so the first time they set foot in his house was after he died. It was a ramshackle place, as to be expected given he’d built it himself. The yard was littered with old pieces of equipment collected in piles that they supposed had some sort of logic to them. None of that surprised them, but what filled the cellar and one wall of his shop did. Hundreds of urns and vases and bowls, made from scrap metal and whatever else Nels had at hand. They were all finely made, intricate designs carved or painted on them. Beautiful in their strange way. Of another world.