Tag Archives: fiction

Field Notes

Posted on by
Reply

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

Passing Through

The wind stirred, bending the blades of grass, moving like an unceasing wave up the hill and down and up the next. A shadow moved behind it as a cloud drifted over the sun.  

The two dozen or so travellers below looked up thankfully at this brief respite from the unseasonable heat. They were heading north, following the trails bison had carved through the grass. Scouts were far ahead with an eye for trouble or game, while further back mothers supervised children and dogs pulling travois. There were jests and laughter and a lightness that comes with the promise of a bountiful season to come. They paused here and there to rest where the hills blocked the sun, but did not linger in this place. 

Later others passed by, now on horseback, flintlocks mixed in with bows and arrows. They moved like the wind, with it, carried to the farthest horizons. Clouds of dust marked their passage when it was hot and dry, as it was now.  

The wind gusted, knocking the grass flat to the ground. The clouds seemed to cluster above, stuck in the sky even though the wind was so fierce below, the sun barely glinting through. 

Others came and left, measuring out the land and marking it with rods they plunged into the earth. All around newcomers arrived, setting up houses and breaking up the land. Here the land was left untouched, no one willing to settle upon it. Not entirely though, for the settlers, seeking permanence that had never been in the nature of the land previously, planted trees in a futile attempt to hold back the wind. Seeds blew to this place and soon enough grew in low lying areas where the water gathered in spring. Short and bent things, huddled close to the land against the wind. 

Later barbed wire fence was strung up, following the surveyor markers, and cattle roamed, carving new paths. A watering hole was dug where the spring runoff naturally gathered. From spring to fall the cattle wandered from the dugout to the eastern spring, finding shade in the copses that dotted the lowlands between the hills. People never lingered, coming only to bring the cattle and collect them when it was time to move to fall grazing, checking occasionally throughout the summer. 

The wind howled and groaned, whistling through the trees with menace, dark clouds massing to the north with the promise of rain and thunder. Dust whipped through the air, clouds of it forming, dimming the sun. 

When it grew too dry more of the surrounding lands were seeded back to grass. Better that than to watch it all blow away. The cattle remained, but the wire was stripped from the fences and the posts dug out or left to rot. Drones operated keeping the various herds separated, moving them to fresh pasture when needed. Only in the spring and the fall, during the great roundups did anyone pass through again – one or two only – supervising the drones’ work.  

Later, travellers passed through again, usually when crocus flowers gave way to golden beans. Usually they were on foot, moving in groups of two or four. They went slowly, stopping to camp on occasion by the eastern spring that still ran true. The bison herds from an earlier rewilding were sometimes still in the hills if the spring had been late in coming, as it often was. At night, as the wind stirred in the grass chasing away the mosquitoes, they would lie back and look at the specks of light in the vast sky above moving on their circuits through the stars. 

Miscellanea

Posted on by
Reply

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Dreaming State

It was a time of nightmares. Minds gripped by the most fevered horrors. Invasion and blood, the unclean and shadowed threats lurking behind every smiling face. No safe harbours to be found.  Neighbours debasing themselves, selling their souls to the highest bidder and willing to defile all that was sacred and true. All that remained was the cruellest of jokes. Foulness triumphant. 

They were consumed by it, unable to look away. Not wanting to. It was important to bear witness, no matter how sickening. How could this be happening? How could they allow it to? Something had to be done. Truth and honour restored. Stability. 

But there was no solid ground to return to. Only these teeming wretched seas, a storm forever on the horizon. They looked and looked, filled with rage and sorrow. How could this be so unending? How could it not? How far they had fallen. So far and falling still. 

The whispers were the worst. Insistent and insidious. Those stern-faced and noble looking ones who declaimed that things were not as they seemed. Truth still held. There was a core foundation, all that had come before, that had been built upon, layer by layer, century upon century. It was there and if only they could stand upon it they would see.  

How could they not see that the edifice was already gone, that the only thing now was to rebuild? But first it all had to be washed away. There was no other choice. Horror must be matched with horror, suffering with anguish, violence with vengeance. Eyes for eyes, hands for hands, blood for blood. The van, the masked face, the shackles and chains and the unblinking eye.  

Do not look away. Do not look away. Keep looking. See what is coming. See what will be done to finally end this. The future is blood and death, kill or be killed, and doing what needs doing no matter the cost. The coming storm. Were they lost within it or riding its encroaching wave? 

Outside, the rain falling in a steady, gentle patter. The earth green and vibrant. A new day and a new season. These are dark times, troubled times, times of fear and blood. Turn away and hold fast. We must do what is necessary.  

The screams are the worst. Whose are they? 

Field Notes

Posted on by
Reply

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

A Proper Home

They packed all their things into trunks and set off for parts unknown. A strange feeling to reduce a life to possessions that could fit neatly into these boxes, everything folded, taken apart and tucked away, to be reassembled elsewhere. But nothing ever goes together in quite the same way again.  

That turned out to be the simplest step, one heavily tinged with anticipation at what was to come. The long journey – first by rail and then by wagon – proved trying and tedious. They shared a cramped car with dozens of others similarly uprooting their lives and casting their hopes on lines on a map some surveyor had drawn decades ago. Who knew what awaited them.  

Once they disembarked they found a half dozen others who were homesteading in the vicinity of their quarter and agreed to make the rest of the journey together. They purchased a wagon and horses, as well as some tools and farm implements and lumber – all at an inflated price, but they had little choice. It was a journey of two days by wagon and these passed without incident. They marvelled at the treeless horizon they passed, nothing but grass and sky as far as the eye could see.  

As they came near their destination they parted ways with those who had shared their journey, everyone branching off to find the surveyor stakes that marked the line on the map in the earth. Their own was nestled in a valley, dotted with small sloughs still gleaming with water in places. At one they found a spring that flowed continuously and they decided to build their house nearby. Later they would find rings of stones on a small ridge where the wind blew clean and kept the bugs away.  

The first few nights they still slept in the back of the wagon while they broke the land, cutting sod out of the ground. They used the sod, the lumber and even some of the wood in the wagon itself, to put up a shack into which they put their possessions. Even when it was finished it still felt temporary and would until they managed to build a proper house. Life on hold, except it wasn’t. They broke the land, planted crops and a garden, harvested it and took the two day journey north to sell it.  

When they finally moved into that proper house two years later there were still things in the trunks that had never been taken out. Though they considered passing them on to someone who could use them, they did not, returning them to the trunks which they used as furniture at the end of beds and sofas. It was a comfort of sorts that some part of that past life and past home was still here in this new one.

Miscellanea

Posted on by
Reply

Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

The Behemoth

One day in their travels they came upon a great behemoth sprawled across the land. So vast was this creature that, at first, they did not realize it was an animal, though that word seems small for the scale of what they faced. They mistook the hair that blanketed its body as some strange vegetation. It was so large, encompassing the whole horizon, seemingly without an end, that they could only guess at its contours. For all they knew what lay before them was a mere appendage of the creature. Nothing resembling a head or eyes or mouth or any other familiar body parts was distinguishable.  

That it was both alive and a creature, was made evident by its movements. These came at irregular intervals, with sometimes more than a day passing between them. From a prudent distance, they could see the hairy surface ripple as some muscle contracted, following which, shadow would be visible between the creature and the ruined earth below. So glacial was its pace that they had no way of determining what direction it was moving, though everyone imagined it was toward them.   

They attempted to travel around the creature, assuming that at some point they must come to its end and be able to pass by. After two days of travel the landscape before them had not changed and there was no sign it would. Seeing no other choice for it, they continued, eventually encountering the people who made their homes upon the behemoth. These proved a disparate lot. Frontier folk mostly, living in scattered dwellings constructed from patches of hair they had cleared from the creature. Apparently there was enough residue earth upon the behemoth to allow crops to grow, for they could see gardens and fields flourishing on the cleared patches. Water they collected from various crevices and folds, some of which were large enough to last a lifetime. 

Out of curiosity they approached some of these individuals to ask why they chose to live upon the behemoth and were met with blank stares. Though they lived near the creature’s edge it had never occurred to them to venture off. To live outside the behemoth seemed foolhardy in the extreme. Most of their fellows thought them mad for living as close as they did to its borders. The behemoth was the universe to them, encompassing the world even as it crossed it, leaving devastation in its wake, while those living upon it were unaffected. 

They decided to venture deeper into the mass of the behemoth to see more of its inhabitants. They encountered birds and animals and insects they had never seen before, and rivers that flowed deeply when it rained. They also came across places where the creature was bald, hair stripped away and not growing back, the soil that everywhere else was heavy on the surface was blown away leaving only bare hide. Great seams of scars ran up and down these areas, creating desolate ridges and valleys they needed to cross. 

The explanation for these wastelands came later as they encountered larger settlements. Here there were mining operations where the flesh of the behemoth was carved open and various parts and fluid extracted. Close by were factories to process everything into an endless number of products: soaps, lamp oil, dried and cured meat, medical tinctures and others they did not recognize. The further in they went, and there was always further to go it seemed, the more of these wastelands they encountered. Some had no scars at all, the desolation the result of something internal to the behemoth. In fact, the further they went the more certain they became that the beast was ailing.  

When they spoke of this to the inhabitants they were met with derision. It had always been so, many said. Others declared that the harvesting of the creature was necessary for its health. It needed to be drained of a certain amount of fluid and flesh in order to maintain its equilibrium. Some claimed that the behemoth was the world itself and refused to believe that there were lands beyond, lands which it traversed and which were ruined as a result. Everywhere they went it was taken as self-evident that living upon the behemoth as they did was the only choice. Most refused to believe they were from elsewhere or that, if they in fact did, that it was really any different.  

After some months of trying to determine the entire extent of the behemoth, they gave up and returned home. Before they left its environs they established markers so that when they returned they could determine if the creature was moving closer. 

Field Notes

Posted on by
Reply

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

The Landlord

He set off for the Quarter in March, as he did every year. An unsettled time, the weather always unpredictable and the ways into the Quarter, which were always drifting, were even harder to trace. It was important that he look in upon his lands each spring to ensure all was in order for the growing season to come, at least that was what he told himself and those he visited. Some years spring had not arrived by the time he did and he was forced to endure a sullen and frigid tour. 

It had been decades since he lived within the Quarter, having fled those environs at the first opportunity. A number of listless years followed wherein he wandered about attempting to find his place in the wider world. That proved difficult, for he spent most of his time half-heartedly indulging in various passion projects, all of which came to nothing. There was his writing, of course, which he quickly gave up once it went from ignored to dismissed. Also, his travel, which he talked about constantly. He was always going to be establishing some new venture in some distant place, only to quietly leave after a few months when he could secure no interest from the locals. 

After a number of years the birthright, which had always been his even as he rejected it out of hand, came to him. His possessions, though not substantial, were more than enough to support him. He was not so foolish as to believe he could return and make of himself a landholder, so he endeavoured to let it out to some of his former neighbours. A satisfactory agreement was reached, but he was left unsatisfied by it and determined that he should tour his lands each spring, though he was told this was strictly unnecessary and in fact something of a burden. The renters and the lawyers and accountants could manage the arrangements perfectly fine without him.  

He ignored them. It felt important that he maintain a connection with the Quarter if he was to have possessions there. And he knew from experience that the longer he stayed away the more difficult it came to find his way back.  

The weather was pleasant when he left, but as he came nearer to the amorphous border of the Quarter it turned, as it often did. Sleet came down heavily, stinging his cheeks and soaking him right through. The rolling hills, which had been brown and bare were soon white with snow. All the roads were obscured, the way forward unclear. He was unconcerned, for past experience had taught him that it was only when he was certain he was utterly lost that he discovered he had somehow entered the environs of the Quarter.  

This time proved no different. By afternoon the skies were clearing and he could see a vast horizon unfolding ahead of him. White lined with darkness where the roads crisscrossed and speckled with other colours where houses stood. Somewhere in that vastness were his holdings. He set off toward them with a lightness in his step. 

Miscellanea

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.