Miscellanea

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Next Door

Distant screams reach their ears, pricking the skin on their arms. At first they are uncertain, unwilling even, to hear them for what they are. Some strangeness with the wind or the elements they tell themselves. It is a windswept and lonely place with everyone living at a far remove from each other. They hear things that those in more populous places would never notice, the sounds drowned out by the general cacophony of life. This is something like that, unfamiliar as it is, and nothing to cause concern. 

As it persists, growing in volume, it becomes undeniable. Those are screams, of hundreds, maybe thousands of individuals. A chorus of despair and agony. It is too disturbing to contemplate and their first instinct is to retreat, to distance themselves from the sounds. To not hear and not bear witness. The voices are still far away and they inhabit a vast expanse. There are many places to go where they might not hear.  

But, they tell themselves, this is their home and whatever is happening beyond the horizon they should remain. It is theirs, after all. They wonder if they should investigate, to see what is the cause of such suffering, but they tell themselves it is not their affair. There are enough problems here without taking on others and anyway, matters will resolve themselves eventually. But they know it is their own fear that stays their hands. 

The screams grow louder and louder. There is no denying they are getting closer. A few decide they can no longer stand aside and live with themselves. They head toward the horizon. Those who stay argue amongst themselves about what they should do. Nothing is resolved and the screams grow louder, invading every moment of every day.  

Two things become apparent. What at a distance sounded like pain and suffering now sounds more like rage and joy. Untold multitudes baying for blood. And as those who left to investigate fail to return and the voices grow ever louder, there can be no denying whose blood they are calling for.  

Field Notes

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

Notes on Certain Settlements in the Quarter

The Summer Camps: Before their exile to the north and east, under the terms of the Dominion treaties, both the Iron Confederacy and the Blackfoot Confederacy ranged across the Quarter, following the bison herds during the summer months and establishing regular camps. The arrival of horses to the territories increased tensions between the Confederacies, resulting in raids by band members on both sides to build their herds. This was exacerbated by the arrival of the Company in the area, allying with the Iron Confederacy to ensure access to the northern river system trade routes. With the loss of the bison herds and the steady encroachment of European settlers into the Quarter, the use of the camps was abandoned. The signing of the treaties ended their use entirely. 

Sybald (also Sybbald, Sebbald): A relatively late European settlement within the Quarter. New arrivals initially travelled south from Lakeview, the closest they could get by train. Within a decade a bustling community had developed, the largest in the area, and an important stop on the new train line. This initial fluorescence was followed by a long period of decline, precipitated by a fire that consumed half the town on the eve of the Great Depression. Many inhabitants left for the northern plains at the insistence of the provincial government. By the turn of the millennium less than ten inhabitants remained, though the surrounding farms still flourished. In later years the population remained relatively stable and it even regained its importance as a transit point during the disputes between the New Dominion and Greater Western Republic to the south. With the reestablishment of the Suffield Army Base as the key infantry base in the region, many of those living to the south moved north to ensure they fell within the perimeter of its drone defence system. 

Gloevers Crossing: As long as there have been people in the Quarter, the spring at Gloevers Crossing was a crossroads for travellers, due to the presence of a free-flowing spring. During the period of European settlement, the spring fed a large, shallow lake that locals flocked to on Sundays to swim. The lake gradually filled in becoming a pond surrounded by a small stand of trees. In more recent years with the continued depopulation of the region as people’s interest has shifted to the settlement of the stars, several wickiups have been established in the shelter of the trees by the spring. These are semi-permanent structures, occupied during the winter months by the O-Bannon Wanderers who migrate throughout the region. 

Miscellanea

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Songs of Creation

The night is cold and dark, everything still and silent. Clouds of your breath hang in the air. Above the stars in their multitudes glimmer, reaching across the infinite emptiness. You call up into the darkness, a cry filled with hope and rage and longing. Only echoes of it return in the vast wintery stillness.   

The new moon in the sky, warm against the cold and the darkness. A song of what is to be. A promise of times to come.  

Great beasts slumber in dark places, hidden away, waiting for their time to return. To walk the land as the cold leeches away and with it the snow. Streams are born that for a brief time will flow finding their way through a place born again. Verdant green and waters with an emerald sheen. The smell of so much life fills your nostrils. 

The sands in the glass trickle down, a steady current. Inexorable, marking every second of every hour, until the last grain spills down and settles and the whole of everything is still. Mountains and valleys, cliffs and crevasses are formed, shaped by movements of air and water. Born and reborn by steady accretion and accumulation. A craggy countenance becoming smooth.  

Becoming new again. Until nothing of what was remains. 

Field Notes

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

Form and Function

There has been much written about the mourning boxes that inhabit so many homes in the Quarter, enough to fill several volumes, yet their innate mysteriousness persists. Even those who possess them and have some inkling as to their origin do not understand the meaning of the objects. They are merely heirlooms, passed down through the family, occupying a place of importance and display in everyone’s homes.  

What they are called, of course, seems to offer a tantalizing clue as to their origins and original purpose, and yet the one thing everyone is certain of with the regards to the boxes is that their name and origin are unrelated. In the Quarter, as elsewhere, the dead are buried in the earth or burned on pyres. Any ashes are placed in urns, not within the mourning boxes, which are always empty and cannot be opened. Aside from being passed down from generation to generation, the mourning boxes have no apparent connection with ancestors or the dead. So why the name? It must be in reference to something. 

The latest research offers a suggestion. Most mourning boxes, especially the oldest, are marked with engravings. These have historically been seen as mere decoration, though it has been noted that the engravings follow similar patterns within families and regions. This was assumed to be because the artisans who made the boxes had a particular style they followed, but it has also been frequently noted that they share certain commonalities with various runic alphabets. A recent comparative analysis of the engravings of 5000 mourning boxes noted a number of repeating motifs that they argued could represent letters. Most of these shapes are angular and there are few horizontal strokes, typical of early runic alphabets.  

Yet the individual runes, if that is what they in fact are, appear to have no connection to any known alphabets and it seems impossible that those coming to the Quarter would suddenly take up an alphabet centuries after their ancestors had abandoned it. In every other facet of their lives they utilized the latin script we are all familiar with, except in this one instance where people of the region used a now forgotten alphabet that had no connection to any used by any of their distant ancestors. Could some runic symbology have somehow passed hidden through the centuries, only to become visible in strange, purposeless boxes in a forgotten and forgettable region inhabited by so many disconnected peoples? 

It is the emptiness of the boxes that I always return to. They are all built hollow, with the form of containers, yet without the function. I am of the belief that the mourning boxes were built to contain something, contents that were never to be disturbed given they were sealed in their construction. Nothing has been discovered inside any of the boxes, but there are few remaining that are more than a century or two old, and by then the meaning of the boxes had already lost, forgotten like the letters that mark it. As with so much of the past, we have the maps to mark the territory, but that is not the same as walking the roads that once crossed there.

Miscellanea

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Your Dreams

You awaken from a dream-filled sleep, disturbed by all you have seen, blinking against the darkness that fails to resolve. The only sound a distant, beating heart. You aren’t sure it’s yours.  

Your house has many rooms and corridors. You go through door after door, but there always another awaiting you. You end up in the basement, but it is a cellar with a dirt floor and a low ceiling whose beams area layered with cobwebs. A salamander darts away into the shadows toward a tiny door. For a rat, but there are no rats here. You crawl through, dirt and cobwebs collecting on your back. A warren of tunnels opens up before you and you choose one. Something is gnawing at your ankle. 

You return home after many years, but everything has changed. The house that you grew up in is derelict, the roof falling in. Your mother is within doing the dishes, the plates and cups all blackened by fire. He’s out back, your mother says without looking at you. A man rides around on the lawn mower. He doesn’t acknowledge you. That’s your new father, your mother says, as the smoke rises from the grass. 

A tree grew from your loins, its roots spreading across the land, its boughs shading every hill and dale. The soil became untillable and people abandoned their villages, wailing about the lost sun. You held it all in your hand for the briefest moment, but then like water it all dribbled away. 

The sun has turned to ice, glittering in the darkness like a distant star. Fog blankets everything. Things move within it, just beyond your vision, as you hurry on your way. You meet on an empty street amidst the rubble of the last wars. We must rebuild, you say. Why, you say, with a shake of your head. It’s better this way. 

Field Notes

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

The Sorcerer Comes to Town

The sorcerer came to town at the end of November. Cold winds arrived with her leaving a blanket of snow on the fields and streets. They were northerners mostly, it was said, though he had driven in from the south. Anyway, it was hard going for a few days. The first cold snap of the year was always the worst as everyone remembered all over again what winter was.  

She moved into the Lang place, which had sat empty since Mabel had left town after Harold went to jail for touching the kids. Once it had been the locus of that end of town, half a dozen or so children heading there every day after school to spend a few hours until their parents came home from work. Most found it fitting that a sorcerer would move into a place like that, so shadowed with the weight of the past that everyone wanted to forget. They were disturbing sorts anyway.  

A few speculated on the logistics. Had the sorcerer bought it? Except it hadn’t been put up for sale, certainly not advertised. Was Mabel renting it? Again, there had been no advertisement. Did sorcerers pay rent and deal with landlords? They must, they were people, after a fashion. 

That he was a sorcerer was evident from the staff he carried, if not his dress. Most had not seen a staff before and they studied it curiously. Easier that than meeting her eyes. It was more like a walking stick, rising only to his waist, with a narrow point at one end. The whole thing was wrapped in thin bands of metal, perhaps silver, for it certainly shone like that. Each band was filled with runes, some only visible in the right light. There were a few left in town who could read the old tongue, but no matter how they were pressed they refused to speak on the meaning of any of the runes. 

The sorcerer wasn’t seen much about town. The odd encounter in the grocery store where everyone fell silent and eyed what she had in her cart. Cereal, milk, nothing unusual. She complained about the price of Doug’s vegetables, but everyone did. People did begin to visit him, though no one would ever admit it. Most entered through the back alley, but they were still seen. It was a small town after all and everyone knew everyone’s business. What transpired within the house was most certainly left unsaid. A sorcerer’s business was her own. 

Miscellanea

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

One Week

The place is quiet. Still. All the noises normally hidden by the usual activities of life are suddenly present. Distinct and recognizable. The hum of electricity, the strange rush of water passing through distant pipes, the longing sigh of air drawn through intake and exhaust vents. The windows are closed against the autumn chill, so the sounds of the street don’t penetrate, making the noises all the more apparent in amidst the other silences. What a clatter is created by mere existence. 

How often have I been alone here and never noticed these things. But so rarely alone like this. My love is away for a week travelling, leaving me at home to my own devices. The hours stretch on, open, with nothing planned to fill them. It is in these moments that the artificiality of our daily lives, the rituals and tasks, habits and chores that we use to fill up our days, is exposed. You can see the seams of everything. How it is all just thrown together, a haphazard quilt to keep out the chill of atomizing, meaningless existence.  

The meaning of things, of all we do, is only apparent in its absence. Our fleeting mortality is what gives shape and weight to our days, which otherwise would pass one after the other without any differentiation. The sum of all we do is the time it grants us with each other. There is no need to mark the days or hours unless you are counting the time until you can see someone again. 

Field Notes

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

Festival Calendar

Seasons have their rhythms everywhere and the Quarter is no different. Its inhabitants have their own ways of marking those cycles, events whose origins are sometimes obscure but which are unimaginable outside of certain times on the calendar. Just as winter warms to spring which unfurls into summer, so the spring socials turn to sports days and fairs. One could travel from town to town across the full deceptive breadth of the Quarter taking in the festivities until harvest begins. Autumn brings turkey suppers and harvest dances, while winter is an interminable time whose dark hours are measured out in card games and curling bonspiels.  

All of these celebrations, in one form or another, can be found in towns and villages across the greater western plains. There are others that are unique to the Quarter, like the First Drop in spring. When the ground is finally warm enough for seeding to begin, farmers across the Quarter will empty a bottle of rye on a chosen field for luck and good harvest. In some places this is a solitary, almost furtive exercise, in others a field is chosen and the whole community turns out for the ceremony, which is concluded with a potluck in the community hall. 

Another is the Fallow Ground, typically in October, although some communities wait until after the first snow stays. Always it is after harvest. Families and sometimes whole communities will gather at a field that has been shorn of its crop and there they will bury human figures made of bread or cake to restore the land. These figures are often marked with some representation of a deceased relative, an acknowledgement of the cycle of life and death in which everyone is engaged. In some cases, a sin-eater is present and one of the bread figures will be given to them, along with a glass of rye or beer, to consume. These individuals are scorned members of the community at all other times of the year, but on this one day it is for them to take the burden of everyone’s sins upon them to ensure next year’s harvest.

Miscellanea

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Autumn Nights

He picked her up in town while the dusk was still creeping through the air. They left the streets behind and soon were passing yellow fields. In the distance a few combines made steady progress, stalked by trucks waiting to be filled. To the west the hills loomed, great shadows on the horizon, the sun hidden behind them, though its light remained for now. He turned off the road onto a narrow laneway, ignoring the private property sign. The trail descended into a valley ending at an irrigation canal. Water flowed through it along the valley, low and dark against the concrete banks, unheard over the sound of the wind slipping through the grass and trees. The valley was dotted with them in the low points where water gathered in spring, golden sentinels watching them as they walked along the levee. 

 They had not spoken aside from their first greeting when she had climbed inside the truck. Now they did as they made their aimless way along the bank, pausing when she saw some fallen leaves gathered beneath a tree. She never missed a chance to hear the sound of them crackling beneath her footsteps. Small pleasures. They spoke of inconsequential things. Days that had passed, days still to come. The things left unsaid were what mattered. Being there together, alone, as the day became night. They turned back once the canal began to climb out of the valley. Hand in hand they went to the truck as the moon rose in the east. 

Field Notes

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

A Good Day

He loaded the flatdeck with the tractor and the post-pounder as the light was still crawling above the eastern horizon. Long shadows lay across the yard mirroring the archipelagos of clouds above, somewhere between white and grey, set against a dark sky becoming blue. The back of the truck was already filled with posts and rolls of barbed wire and a fencing connector and a five-gallon pail filled with fencing nails. The hammer and pliers were in his toolbelt, tucked behind the seat of the truck alongside the cooler with his lunch and thermos of coffee.  

He was on the road by the time the shadows had resolved to light, leaving a trail of dust that hung in the air long after his passage. Once he reached the pasture he had a cup of coffee leaning against the truck, listening to the wind stir the grass. The only other sound was the call of the birds, blackbird and meadowlark mostly, and the hum of the grasshoppers. A bad year for them. The cool of the morning, promised the end of their season was just around the corner. The cattle were out of the pasture, having been sold the week before. Winding down that season as well and getting ready for the next. 

The morning he spent on the west fence. There were no bad posts so he just used the truck, replacing nails that had fallen out and connecting a broken section of wire. Lunch was salmon sandwiches with cucumbers and carrots from the garden. Dessert was a slice of chocolate zucchini cake. He washed everything down with the last of the coffee. The north fence had a few posts that had broken off, so he brought the tractor and post-pounder around to deal with them. The bottom wire was going as well, so he decided to replace the full length of it. That took the rest of the afternoon with still some left to finish the next day.  

He quit when he started to get hungry. The shadows were already getting long, the clouds tinged with red as the sun drifted low in the west. He left the flatdeck, tractor and post-pounder in the pasture. By the time he’d strung up the gate and turned the truck onto the road home, he had to turn on the lights. They caught grasshoppers flitting ghostlike across the road, dodging out of the way of the truck. He turned on the radio to listen to the weather for tomorrow.