20Living in the Last Sane City on Earth
By JinglefairyWarnings/Disclaimers/that sort of thing: This story contains violence, implied sex, implied sexuality of various varieties, references to child abuse, some crude language, horror, occult themes ... basically this story has stuff in it people might find offensive. I don't know which bits might be offensive because, really, I don't find any of it offensive. It's not a story I would show to my grandmother. This story does not contain explicit sex scenes or extensive graphic violence. It is not intended to be purely titilating. Sorry. Summary: Since the Cataclysm the world has been thrown into chaos. The laws of science and magic have fused, creating a new set of laws that are as yet unfixed. Even as humankind struggles to adapt, the world settles into its new groove. Of all the cities in the new world Kallai remains a beacon of sanity amidst the madness, and even she has her lunacies. This is the story of four adolescents caught up in the flow and flux of the aftermath of the Cataclysm, and how they deal with the terrors of the world and each other.
FRIDAY Something funny is going on in this house. I'm not sure what, but I'm suspicious. I've had a feeling that things are not as they seem since we got here but I figured it was just paranoia, only now I'm almost certain it's real, whatever it is.
It all started this morning. I was in the garden, out the front of the church, where Father Brannon grows his roses. They're beautiful, all red and gold and white, like his robes, which he only ever wears for high mass or whatever it's called. I don't know. I'm not very good with religious things. I guess I'm a little heathen child. Don't get me wrong, I want to believe in God and I say my prayers at night, but I don't know that anyone's listening.
Anyway, I was in the garden, helping Father Brannon weed the border, when I looked up at the church for the first time, really. It's beautiful. Small but beautiful, with the stained glass windows (real stained glass, not leadlighting) and the spiky ironwork all over. And the gargoyles. I love the gargoyles. It's nice to think something is watching over us, even if they are just scowling cast-iron lumps.
On the front, in bass relief and larger than life, there's a marble woman. She's draped all around with cloth, which hangs in folds from her neck to her feet and trails over the words that are carved above the door in thick, gothic-like letters. I looked up at her this morning and thought how very sad she looked, how very, very mournful. I said so.
Father Brannon smiled. "That is Our Lady," he told me.
"Our Lady? You mean the Queen?"
He shook his head. "No, not the Queen. The Madonna. The Mother of God."
"Oh." I squinted up at her. "Why have a picture of her up there and not of God?"
"Well, for one thing, God is a concept too grand to carve in marble. And in any case, she is the patron saint of this Church. Nuestra Senora de los Tristes. Our Lady of the Sorrows."
"Los Tristes. So that's what it means." I stared at her, the hot sun searing my hair. "Is it Latin?"
"Spanish," he told me, patiently pulling up soursobs.
"So ... this is a Spanish church?"
"It was once."
"Are you Spanish then?"
"No," he smiled. "My people come from Wale. Europa."
"Oh. And Cadogan? Is he from Wale?"
"He was born here in Kallai. But I believe his mother was a Nipponese Islander."
"But his name ... it sounds Anglian, or something."
Father Brannon looked at me for a moment, and something passed across his face which I almost missed, like a shadow from a cloud, except the sky was burned clear. "When he began his novitiate, he took that name. It is the custom."
"Oh."
I let it go then and went back to weeding the verge but this afternoon I did some searching on the net and I couldn't work out what religious order required the name change. There were plenty which insisted on a man taking a name when he was ordained, but they were all the names of saints, like Brother John, or Brother Michael Francis. Cadogan and Brannon weren't the names of any saints I could find, except for Cadogan as Cadfael, some kind of Black Friar from Old Anglia.
So I decided to ask Cadogan. I found him in the kitchen, making lemon cake.
"Hey Fran." He held out the bowl. "You want to stir?" As if I was a kid. I shook my head no.
"I was wondering ... are we Roman Catholic? I mean, Los Tristes, is it Roman Catholic or something else?"
He gave me an odd look. "Los Tristes is a church, Fran. I suppose you could say it was some sort of orthodox because of the name and the statues, but really, anyone can come here for worship or asylum."
"Then what about you?" I asked. "What denomination are you?"
"Oh, I suppose you could say I'm Ecumenical." He smiled. I didn't know what that meant so I pressed him.
"Is that like the Black Friars? Ecumenical?"
"No," he said after a moment, pouring the cake mix into the tin and scraping out the bowl. "Ecumenical means I have a more general system of beliefs, which embraces many and excludes none. What about you? What do you believe?"
I shrugged. "It doesn't matter."
He straightened from the oven and looked me square in the eye. "Yes, it does, Fran. It matters a lot. If you don't have something to believe in you'll end up losing your way. Trust me. I know." And he got that look, like the one Falcon gets when Rowan says something callous about the boy, the one who died. It was a sort of hurt, a sort of loss, a sort of regret and confusion.
Then he smiled at me. "Want to lick the spoon?" It wasn't until after the cake was ready that I realised I hadn't gotten an answer.
Julian came by after dinner. He was wearing the same shirt and jeans, like he always does, and his hair smelled like wattle blossom and something else. He said he came by to bring Falcon a book, but I think he was checking up on us. It's nice. I like Julian. I can't help but like him. He listens to me, even when I'm not saying anything. He pays attention. And he smiles.
He went upstairs to deliver the book and say hello to Rowan, and then he sauntered into the study. I was holed up in the corner of an armchair reading Juvenal (and when I say corner I mean it; those chairs are enormous).
"Hello Fran," he smiled. "How are you doing?"
"Same," I told him. "Better and worse."
He perched on the edge of the desk, crossing his long legs at the ankle and folding his arms over that plain white shirt. "Better how?"
"It's weird, not having needles stuck in you on a semi-daily basis," I said. It came out wrong; it was supposed to be a joke but it sounded sarcastic. Words do that; they play tricks on me. Maths, yes; words, no.
Somehow, Julian understood. He's cool that way. "I can see that. So, how is it worse?"
I couldn't answer straight off; I had to think. "Now I know it was all a lie. And now I don't trust people. Like Father Brannon. I mean, he's nice and all, but I can't really trust him. Or Nathan."
"And Cadogan?"
"He's more like one of us than one of them," I said, and then thought about it. "Still, I can't talk to him."
"And me?" Julian smiled, tilting his head so his hair fell forward and into his eyes, filling the room with the scent of wattle and an indefinable something. "Do you trust me?"
"What do you think?" I said, typically perverse. He just smiled.
"If you need anything," he said simply, "just ask."
"What are they?" I blurted out. Julian cocked his head on one side, puzzled. "Father Brannon and Cadogan, I mean. What denomination, or order, or whatever?"
He nodded. "Ah. Well, none and all, I suppose. Have you heard of the Bahai?"
"The ones who say everyone really worships the same god regardless of the name?"
"Something like that. Well, Los Tristes is one of the churches taken over by a similar group, an order of Universalists."
"So Father Brannon is a Universalist?"
"Of a sort." Julian smiled. "Anything else?" I shook my head. "Well, I'll see you later then." And he left. I could still smell the pollen in the air when I went up to bed.
Falcon's door was open. I found him lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling with a book open on his chest and a candle burning in a saucer next to him.
"You'll ruin your eyes in that light," I mock-scolded. He started, and looked up at me with an odd expression. "Whatcha reading?" I asked.
"Neruda," he said.
"Huh?"
"Tonight I can write the saddest lines," he quoted. "Write, for example, the night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance. The night wind revolves in the sky and sings."
"Oh, poetry."
"Julian leant it to me."
"I saw him. We talked."
"Oh?" Falcon propped himself up on one elbow to look at me. "What did he say?" I wasn't sure in the half-light, but I thought he looked flushed. He caught me peering at him and shook his fringe forward to cover his face.
"Not a lot." I sniffed. "You know, I can still smell him in here, that wattle-pollen something smell."
"The ocean," Falcon supplied. "It's the ocean."
I didn't ask how he knew. None of us have ever seen the ocean.
* * * * *
to be continued
NB: Falcon is reading Pablo Neruda. If you aren't familiar with the poet I recommend you look him up as his work is both achingly heartfelt and stunning in its simplicity.
"Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, 'The night is starry The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes?
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture."
~ taken from 'Tonight I can Write' by Pablo Neruda
.edu/~