\nHis father\u2019s side of the family says that the boy grew up half-wild in the forest. But wouldn\u2019t they have too, if they\u2019d lived where he did? They wouldn\u2019t have been able to resist the fluting trunks of the plaster-birches, serried to eternity before the subsiding sun, or the swish of tails in the undergrowth or the skitter of fire-beetles\u2019 hot legs on bark either. They too would have felt part of a story ten thousand years in the making, and nowhere its end.\n<\/p>\n
\nOf course, he doesn\u2019t say any of this. He just smiles, and nods, as if he knew what they meant. As if he was a little embarrassed by it too.\n<\/p>\n
\n
\nThe day his childhood ends he rides back after a morning spent stalking a deer. In front of him is the Manor, reclining between silky green paddocks and the gardens replete with polite shrubbery. Farther down is the green nook of the valley snaking to a distant floodplain, flanked by tired old hills, at its nadir the river named for his ancestors. The water is rich with coppergold flecks of early-afternoon sunlight. A fragrant afternoon wind sweeps up over the fields and the treetops and the terrazzo roofs and rushes in bearing a storm of aromas\u2013grass, and livestock, and the stinging sweetness of spiralflowers blooming in glorious purple-red lakes on the otherwise bald hillsides.\n<\/p>\n
\nLooming over all this in the distance is the Trapezoid. A giant tower of brute greyblack metal rising so high it scythes the clouds like the bow of a colossal ship. A thing neither seeking nor receiving welcome in this pleasantly aged land. A thing of grim purpose, and nothing else.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe lets his horse loose and notices a cluster of black cars parked by the Manor\u2019s entrance. The knowledge that his father is back sucks the life from his blood. Grey-suited guards watch him approach with their arms crossed and their eyes hidden behind their sunglasses.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe boy halts in front of one of them.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt isn\u2019t sunny,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe guard scowls.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cYou\u2019ll address me as milord<\/em>, thank you very much.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe guard sneers and makes to say something. Then he pauses, and purses his lips.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat, milord<\/em>?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy are you wearing\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA pyroclastic blast of the boy\u2019s father\u2019s voice erupts from inside the house.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBoy, is that you? Come here! We have guests!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy gives the guard one last look.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re going to ruin those nice city shoes in this country mud,\u201d he says, and heads in.\n<\/p>\n \nHis father\u2019s in the main hall. The wooden beams latticed overhead, golden-brown and sinuously irregular, are older than the country the valley is now part of. On the far side is a bay window opening onto a balcony and a view of the valley and the Trapezoid.\n<\/p>\n \nThere\u2019s someone else there. A young woman, thin-lipped, large-nosed and severe, pretty in the way statues of goddesses are. She looks like she\u2019d be cold to the touch. His father\u2013bearded, dark, taking up more space somehow than just what his body does\u2013at her and says, \u201cSay hello.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHello,\u201d says the boy.\n<\/p>\n \nThe woman looks the boy up and down like she was appraising a purchase.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHello,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is my protege from the city,\u201d says the father. \u201cShe\u2019s an immensely talented young lady, and will be very important one day. You are to be her husband.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy looks out across the balcony. The sun slinks down behind the Trapezoid, and the half-night of its shadow slicks down the hillsides. In the gloom the valley is transformed. A truck full of goats bleats on their way to some distant abattoir down the road. The swirl and curve of a flock of birds flying back to the forest to roost. Yet even the distant hillsides, where the sun still shines, seem dim and bleached. Strange, he thinks, how the brightness of the outer world seems so much at the mercy of his inner one.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI see,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \nThe forest isn\u2019t untouched. Humans have traversed it for a thousand years and their paths persist, deteriorating beneath the leafy hush. One of these leads up the ridge at the back of the valley and then down through a long and sloping expanse of giant ochrewoods with thundercloud canopies that split into two loves like a human brain. At its terminus is a lake and buried on its far shore is an old alien ship. A shambolic survivor of that long-lost realm, mostly lost to silt and the forest\u2019s green creep. Like everything else from Betelguese it\u2019s far tougher than it need be and so it\u2019s still functional. When the boy was younger he\u2019d lie face-down with his eye to a crack in the mossy ground and watch its glimmering insides sparkle and hiss and listen to its computers make announcements in an odd alien tongue that sounded like torrents of breaking glass.\n<\/p>\n \nHe heads out before dawn the next day in the shadow of his betrothal. He hasn\u2019t been through the ochrewoods in a long while and when he gets to them he slows his horse down. Their progress is muted by a rusty carpet of fallen needles and the air\u2019s thick with the scent of resin. He loses himself in an interminable present, a golden-green space between cathedral pillars of the treetrunks and the stained-glass tint of the falling light. He notices the bear far later than he should have\u2013a big black-furred thing, standing comfortably on his hind legs not twenty feet away, half hidden in some undergrowth. When he does notice it he immediately thinks there\u2019s something off about its face, but in his slowboiling panic he doesn\u2019t pay that much mind.\n<\/p>\n \nHe reaches for his gun. The beast takes off, sprinting on two legs with amazing speed.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy gives chase. There are other things he only notices in hindsight. How his horse seems completely unafraid of his quarry, though normally it will snort and toss its head on chases. How the bear is bipedal, and how it seems to know all the gullies and obstacles in the old growth. Still, it\u2019s not till it stops by the lakeside and turns with an arrow knocked in a sleek black bow that he realizes that what he\u2019s hunting isn\u2019t a bear at all, but a woman.\n<\/p>\n \nShe snarls, sharp-cheeked, her eyes narrow and her face smeared with red warpaint. She\u2019s wearing a great bear pelt and her face is pale beneath its gaping jaws.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou got me, little lord,\u201d she growls. \u201cYou gonna shoot me, now?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy lowers his gun.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, madam,\u201d he says. \u201cI mistook you for a bear.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe woman lowers her weapon too.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re a good tracker.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you identify yourself?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBecause I wanted to see if I could get away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI could have shot you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo you couldn\u2019t.\u201d She snorts. \u201cYou\u2019re from the valley, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI am. You?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe points, to the low space between the two peaks across the lake.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy village\u2019s over there. Some fuckers\u2019re trying to convince us to sell a few plots so they can dig oil.\u201d She spits, a practiced gesture, her gob flying bullet-true into the water. \u201cMy dad said I should fuck off while they negotiate so I don\u2019t kill anyone.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI see.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe squints at him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo you don\u2019t.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cVery well. I don\u2019t.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA moment passes. They appraise each other. Then the boy gestures with his chin to the west. \u201cThere\u2019s something interesting over there, if you want to see, and pass the time.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe alien ship?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou know it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI know it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m heading there now.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe woman thinks for a bit. She has green eyes, he thinks vaguely. Green eyes and a tiny flattened nose and skin the colour of butter. The boy isn\u2019t certain why these details matter. He knows only that seeing them is like peering through the crack at the spaceship, at something seen in mere sliver, something that fills his imagination like an electric storm.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen his attention returns he realizes the woman\u2019s watching him with the same look.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s mademoiselle,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPardon?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou called me madam. I\u2019m not madam. I\u2019m mademoiselle.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy nods.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI see,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe boy tries to sneak out early again the next day and finds his father is sitting on the verandah. Bundled against the dawn cold, frowning at a sheet of paper picked from the slumped piles at his feet, he\u2019s like some laudatory vision of patriarchy painted in ode to the nobility of fatherhood. Look at the fathers. See how they work for you<\/em>. But the boy gets the only same clammy feeling he always does when he\u2019s near his father. A feeling like cold slime running down his spinal cord.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMorning, father,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \nHis father doesn\u2019t look up.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m going riding.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cInto the forest.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFine.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe father writes something. The pencil is overslender between his fat fingers and he handles it with a daintiness repulsive in a creature so large, so full of battering edges. The boy flees. He saddles his horse and prepares his weapons and the building excitement of seeing the bear girl again warms him with the relentless progress of viscous lava.\n<\/p>\n \nWhen he leads his horse out his father\u2019s standing, animated, talking to his protege. She looks over, scowling, and the father looks too.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere\u2019re you going?\u201d he snaps.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTo the forest.\u201d The clamminess returns. \u201cI told you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis boy, always going to the forest. What\u2019s so good about the forest?\u201d The father\u2019s voice engorges as he lectures. \u201cYour responsibilities are here. Think about the people who rely on you. Look, your future wife is here. You won\u2019t go running off when you should be showing her around. Anyway, the Trapezoid\u2019s firing in a few minutes. You have to watch. I do all of this for you, who else? And now you run off like an ungrateful child. Act your age. Put that horse away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe walks into the house and the protege follows, a remora in his carnivorous wake.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy leads his horse back to the stable and returns to the house and doing so presses his chest inwards like slipping into a tub of cold water. The younger servants look harried and the older ones give him pitying looks and sometimes they touch him, gently, on the elbow. He joins his father and the protege on the front balcony and already great vines of electricity are crawling up the distant sides of the Trapezoid. The clouds at its thunderous peak drift circlewise into a heavenly iris and the trees sway back and forth though there\u2019s no wind. An abrupt sheet of cawing skydogs swoop low overhead, their fleshy wings distended and reddish, their canine faces gaping with alarm. After a few moments there\u2019s a series of droning booms and the whole vast structure on the horizon lights up. For a short while it looks like a blade still hot from the forging plunged into the earth\u2019s soft skin. The cloudcover scatters and a blast of wind buffets them, smelling of iron and rubber and some acridity the boy can\u2019t name.\n<\/p>\n \nThe forest falls silent. Down in the valley, people stop and look at the Trapezoid. They talk and then some turn and look up at the Manor. Up, the boy realizes, at them.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMagnificent,\u201d whispers his father. He grabs the boy and holds him to his chest. \u201cSee what your father\u2019s done, boy. He\u2019s won us the war. Isn\u2019t that right?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy knows him well enough to know he\u2019s not speaking to him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou have, milord,\u201d says the protege.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo more of that! You\u2019re family now. Call me father.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe father shoves the boy towards the protege and for an instant their hands touch. She catches his eye and then looks away. As if she knows the boy saw her after the Trapezoid fired. As if he noticed that it wasn\u2019t pride he saw on her face, but something a lot like fear.\n<\/p>\n \nShe steps away.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes,\u201d she says, quietly. \u201cFather.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n \n\u201cI heard she had an entire village moved for a dam,\u201d says the bear girl. \u201cI heard she didn\u2019t even give them so much as a head\u2019s up. Just popped up one day and told \u201cem all to feck off.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe climbs down a cleft between two damp and mossy lips of rock and the boy follows. The earth below is damp and pebbly and slathered with strings of lichen growing what slivers of sunlight can penetrate. Fungoids crawl on their weird fleshy legs, oblivious and serene, up the walls. Ahead is a shallow tunnel and the boy and the girl proceed along this with their breath and footsteps echoing, dulled, off the slick walls.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe did?\u201d says the boy. \u201cWhere did you hear that?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe girl looks back over her shoulder, grinning.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019ve got our networks.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey emerge into a small cavern. The far wall\u2019s made up of the smooth cloudgrey hull of the ship, running angled from a pool of clear water into the rocks above. A chunk of ceiling is missing and roots dangle through this like dead hair. The girl adjusts her bear-helm and touches the metal and an aperture in the hull swivels open for her. Inside, lights react to their passing with the steady escalation and subsidence of breath.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow long have you been here, then?\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \nThey come to another wall and the girl presses her hand to it and another entryway spins open. There\u2019s a bedroom beyond, bright and warm, walls clad with moss and flowers growing sideways and up to the lights overhead. At the far side is a great sweeping console before huge window opening into the sunspeared depths of the lake. A bug-eyed fish four times bigger than the boy drifts by, grumpy-mouthed, staring and curious.\n<\/p>\n \nThe girl tosses her bear helm on the floor and wanders over to the console. She sits with her feet up.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s hard to tell in the forest,\u201d she says. \u201cI get lost in there sometimes. It\u2019s like…there\u2019s a thousand stories, and I can hear them all, even if I\u2019ll never hear the end.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy sits on her bed and turns her words over in his mind, wondering if they\u2019re merely coincidence, or a sign.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy did you lie to me?\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAbout what?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAbout your father. And the village.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI didn\u2019t lie. He did send me away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut your village isn\u2019t over the mountains.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe pouts.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt is. This is my ancestor\u2019s ship. My people have lived over the hills since it crashed here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI didn\u2019t know you looked so much like us.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe holds his gaze and then slips out of her coat and her tunic beneath. She\u2019s thin, angular, her torso elongated and her hips wide. Her legs are covered in sparse bluish down.\n<\/p>\n \nShe comes over and helps him out of his clothes and inspects his body also.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYour legs are thicker than I expected,\u201d she breathes.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy stiffens.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAre they?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe runs her hands along his biceps and the fluff on his forearms and then down to the slight swell of his belly.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019ve never seen one of you naked before.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy\u2026\u201d The boy gulps. \u201cWhy now?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe knows what he means is, why me<\/em>.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d Her lips drift towards his. \u201cThere don\u2019t always need be a reason for things.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nNo, the boy wants to say. There\u2019s always a reason, always, even if you can\u2019t imagine it. But now is not the time to say such things. Now is the time for something else entirely.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe villagers have seen the beast on television and they all agree that nothing on television is really real. But then the groom\u2019s sister\u2019s boy, a soldier, gets some time off after a battle with the creature somewhere out west. Rumours spread within days of his return. He spends most of his time in a darkened room and pisses himself at night. He shivers when he sees insects. Sometimes he starts screaming for no reason, and doesn\u2019t stop for hours.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy can relate. Dressed in his wedding day finery, he wants to scream too. He wants to run through the halls and rip down the garlands of white flowers and knock over the carefully arrayed clay lamps with their immobile coconut-oil flames. He\u2019s devised a thousand ways to ruin the ceremony, and runs each scenario through his head. Then, behind him, a polite cough. The boy shoves the thoughts away, as if they\u2019d be visible to anyone who looked.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nIt\u2019s the groom.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMilord looks very handsome.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDo I?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes. Like a right little lord. Like when you was young.\u201d The groom smiles. \u201cYer mother used to dress you up like that and you\u2019d walk through the forest. Not knee-high, giving orders, organizing things. No one understood a thing you was saying.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy doesn\u2019t remember. He nods at the Trapezoid through his window.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDifferent times,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \nThe groom joins him. He smells of sweat and manure and other honest things.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s ugly, alright, but if it\u2019ll win us the war…\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOr kill us all,\u201d says the boy.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cEh?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe beast has to be close when the Trapezoid fires.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe groom runs his tongue over his teeth.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAh. That\u2019ll explain it, then.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cExplain what?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe groom drops his voice.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMe sister\u2019s boy, right? He said the thing was coming. He could feel it, he says. In his bones.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI heard he was insane.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe\u2019s no nutter, milord. He\u2019s a good boy. Tough.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy straightens.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re not coming to the ceremony like that , are you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe groom looks at his feet.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI weren\u2019t invited.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNone of us was. Only milord\u2019s family, and milady\u2019s family.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe\u2019s right. There\u2019s no one from the village at the ceremony. Not a single familiar or friendly face. The boy tries to push his anger away but every time he looks at the protege, pretty and demure in her creamy silk wedding robes, he wants to tip her off the side of the balcony. He tries to project his rage through his expression but he fails. Not because it doesn\u2019t radiate from his every action and expression like radiation from leaking core, but she doesn\u2019t look at him through the entire ceremony. Not once.\n<\/p>\n \nAfterwards he\u2019s forced to walk about and take the unsolicited advice of uncles and aunts and strangers all speaking to him as if the very idea that he might know what\u2019s best for himself is an affront to their dignity. The protege and his father luxuriate in their presence and speak about big things\u2013empires and economies\u2013as if they were very small, but their perfume gives the boy a headache. The first chance he gets he sneaks off to his room and locks the door. No one knocks on it until the following morning. There is no wedding night.\n<\/p>\n \n \nSome villagers come to the manor in timid delegation and stand, uncertain, at the foot of the stairs to the verandah. There\u2019s the baker twins\u2013two identical old women in black cardigans and grey skirts. Their heads are like sagging old pumpkins wrapped in paired black scarves, each blotched with neon blossoms. There’s the groom\u2019s sister\u2019s boy, the ex-soldier, out in the daylight with nary a sign of madness or piss. There\u2019s also two other middle aged men the boy hasn\u2019t ever seen before. Immigrants. These try walking up the steps before one of the bakers pulls them back, shaking her head.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019re worried,\u201d says one of the immigrants to the boy. There\u2019s a cigarette perched like a tiny syringe behind his ear. In the whitegold light his reddish hair looks like spun copper. \u201cWhat\u2019ll we do if the beast comes this way?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nWe\u2019ll die, the boy wants to say. The valley is too soft and too old to protect us. The beast will crush it all beneath its feet.\n<\/p>\n \nUnless\u2013\n<\/p>\n \nHis father strides out onto the verandah.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d he says. \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cForgive us, milord,\u201d says one of the baker women. She raises her hands, steady and fat-fingered and veiny, and bows. \u201cWe\u2019re worried about that thing there.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat thing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThat there Trapezoid.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019ll bring the beast here,\u201d says an immigrant.\n<\/p>\n \nThe father beckons them up onto the verandah, and turns to the boy.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDon\u2019t just stand there. Bring your people something to drink!\u201d he snaps. \u201cThese are hard working people. We\u2019d be nothing if it weren\u2019t for them.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy goes to the house and waits in the shadows to the count of twenty. He knows the servants started making tea and crumpets the moment the villagers arrived. When his countdown\u2019s over he catches the first whiff of buttery warmth and a moment later two servants come past him, smiling and complicit, bearing trays of food and drink.\n<\/p>\n \nOut on the verandah the villagers are sitting at his father\u2019s feet, eyes glazed by his pontification. One of the immigrants interrupts him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy lord, but the beast will come,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \nThe father glares.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes\u2026\u201d he says slowly. \u201cI told you, though. It\u2019ll stay down in the lowlands.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBut we can\u2019t be sure. It\u2019s up north. The fastest way here is across the hills, and\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat do you do?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe man blinks.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMe?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes, you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m a systems engineer.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat sort of systems?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cUm, industrial networking, mostly. I don\u2019t\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWould you take anything I had to say about designing one seriously? Given I don\u2019t know anything about it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWith respect, my lord, not really\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe father claps and sits back, grinning.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere you go.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2013I don\u2019t comprehend.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy passes the crumpets around. The baker twins accept them with big smiles and a bob of their heads and so too does the ex-soldier. The men don\u2019t. The boy joins them on the floor and a few moments later the protege wanders out, immaculate in a magenta dress, and stands by his father.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019ve been working on this project for twenty years,\u201d says the father. \u201cMy protege here\u2013your lady one day\u2013has for five. She can vouch for its safety. Can\u2019t you?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe protege nods.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFear not,\u201d she says. \u201cYour village is safe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOur<\/em> village,\u201d says one of the baker twins. \u201cIf you\u2019re our lady, it’s our<\/em> village.\u2019\n<\/p>\n \nThe protege\u2019s smile flickers.\n<\/p>\n \nThey finish eating their crumpets and leave, dissatisfied. The father watches them go and then grumbles his way back inside.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey\u2019re good people,\u201d he says. \u201cBut ignorant, ignorant. What fool told them the valley was in trouble?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIsn\u2019t that man right?\u201d says the boy. \u201cThe beast was <\/em>last seen to the north. Over the hills. Won\u2019t it come over them, across the valley, to the Trapezoid?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe protege glances at him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou think I haven\u2019t thought of that?\u201d snaps his father.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, that\u2019s not it, father. It\u2019s that even if you have, you can\u2019t predict\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cListen. That beast\u2019s been here for thousands of years, thousands. Long before we came here. It knows the landscape. Why would it climb over mountains when it can just take a nice walk down one of those big valleys to the south? It\u2019ll go that way, like it always does, and then loop up north. You stick to what you\u2019re good at. Scrubbing horses and hunting rabbits and running about the jungle like your mother used to. Leave the big questions to we who know better.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe stalks on. A moment passes and the boy realizes the protege\u2019s still standing there with him. She turns to him, mouth open, but he walks out with his fists clenched, like some diminished doppelganger of his father in his rage. He heads around the house to the front drive, not quite certain where he\u2019s going until he sees the delegation ahead. After a moment\u2019s hesitation he breaks into a trot and calls out.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIf the beast comes, it wont come from that way.\u201d He points. \u201cThere\u2019s a huge grove of ochrewoods. They\u2019re big enough to impede it.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI heard it\u2019s haunted up there,\u201d says one of the immigrants.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBy good things,\u201d says one of the baker twins. \u201cThem\u2019s that helped our people when we first got here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing up there but sunbears and wildfolk,\u201d says the boy. \u201cAnd neither will bother us too much.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe can\u2019t just huddle in the forest,\u201d says the ex-soldier. \u201cWe need to prepare.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes.\u201d The boy chews his lip. \u201cBut this needs to be quiet. If my father finds out, he\u2019ll put a stop to it. He\u2019ll see it as us undermining him.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe ex-soldier peers as if he\u2019d never really seen the boy before. The baker twins step forward, smiling, and wrap him up in two pairs of muscly old arms.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe\u2019ll keep your secret, little lord,\u201d says one of the immigrants.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cOur<\/em> secret,\u201d says one of the baker twins.\n<\/p>\n \nThey let go and the boy watches the five of them head out the gates. Then he turns to head back up to the house and sees the protege standing not far away. She\u2019s staring at him, her gaze probing and urgent and suspicious. He makes a point of walking past her without looking back.\n<\/p>\n \n \nIt\u2019s easy enough to recruit people from the village to help. They\u2019re all frightened and relieved that someone shares their fears. Servants get involved, the groundskeepers, even some of the older children. They shuttle in and out of the green fastness at odd hours with shovels and ropes and little packs of concrete. Others make the trek up the long way around with boxes of canned beans and broccoli and chili. They have lookouts posted who at first hoot like owls when one of the father\u2019s po-faced guards comes wandering near, preposterous in their sleek grey suits. Later, one of the children starts snorting like a pig instead, and soon that\u2019s the noise everyone associates with them\u2013the frenetic grumbling of the forest\u2019s binkeepers.\n<\/p>\n \nThe beast heads west. On the plains near the City of Star Machines it obliterates a division of tanks and kills four hundred and seventeen soldiers. Protests erupt in the City of Iron Beasts. This land belongs to the beast as much as it does to us, they say. They flood the streets on a festival day and dance and play bagpipes. Then someone ploughs through the crowd in a motorcycle, holding a sword, and kills seven. Huddled beneath the darkening trees, the villagers watch footage of bloody goop crawling like treacle into a drain and a young woman in a white t-shirt wailing over the body of an old man. They don\u2019t know what to think.\n<\/p>\n \n \nA few days later a fresh contingent of people arrive in sleek convoy and set up shop in the manor. They\u2019re all well dressed and well spoken but the boy notices a tightness to them, a nonspecific tumescence, like they\u2019re always on the brink of some tissue-shredding detonation. His father walks one step behind them and calls them sir<\/em> and madam <\/em>and spends hours locked away with them in rooms. Then at night he stands on the balcony, staring over the village, chain-smoking and scratching his chin gently as if trying to dislodge a scab.\n<\/p>\n \nOne night when the boy returns from the forest he finds the protege in his room.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019re you doing here?\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \nShe walks around, prim, with her hands crossed at her waist. Her immaculate hair\u2019s frayed slightly from the day\u2019s work\u2013he\u2019s seen her scurrying around after his father, snapping at other minions in the voice of someone certain they deserve to lead. She peers at the two landscapes on his wall and the collection of old dolls in the blackwood wardrobe by the door.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou play with dolls?\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThose were my mother\u2019s.\u201d A brief glance. She\u2019s worried she\u2019s crossed some sort of line. The boy plays up to it. \u201cDo you have a problem with them?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot at all.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe keeps wandering.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019d like you to leave my room, please.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019re you doing up in the forest?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCavorting with my alien lover.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe protege scowls.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPlease don\u2019t be vile.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s vile about aliens?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019re you really doing up there?\u201d She comes towards him, looking as if she\u2019s just noticed a stain on his chin that might be chocolate, or shit. \u201cI\u2019ve seen you talking with the peasants. I\u2019ve seen you skulking around.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThey\u2019re not peasants. They\u2019re freefolk.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAre you being disloyal to your father?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDisloyal? No. I\u2019m not impeding him. I\u2019m not getting in the way.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSo you are doing something.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s it to you what I do?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe blinks and bobs her head.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re my husband.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAh. Is that why you\u2019re here?\u201d He steps up to her. \u201cAre we finally going to fulfil our nuptial duties?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe walks backwards into the bed and pivots away before she can fall.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhatever it is,\u201d she says. \u201cConsider yourself under observation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cBy my own wife?\u201d The boy smiles, and steps towards her again. \u201cAs things should be.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe snorts with alarm, and backs out of the room. It\u2019s the first time the boy\u2019s enjoyed her company, even if she didn\u2019t enjoy his. Or perhaps\u2013because.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe bear girl doesn\u2019t understand what the boy\u2019s doing and doesn\u2019t help. She avoids him when he\u2019s with the others and eventually he has to trek over to the sunken ship and wait for her to return from her day\u2019s perambulations to speak to her.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI want to show you something tomorrow,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot your bunker,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo.\u201d He kisses her fingers, her knuckles, the slim bones of her hand. \u201cSomething else.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe next day they head east, where the hilltops grow sharper and the valleys sink and narrow into gorges. It\u2019s cold despite the high spring sun and the gusting wind is heavy memories of the icy season past. The animals they see\u2013cross-eyed marmot-likes, plump and purple, and sniffing foxes on long stalking legs\u2013 watch them not with fear, but curiosity. After a couple of hours they come to a strangely symmetrical valley hosting a series of large depressions. Each is fronted with some unreflective grey stone pocked here and there with determined little bursts of foliage. The bear girl jumps down into one and walks along with her fingers on the rough and gristly stone. Sometimes she stops and sniffs it. Sometimes she crouches and stares at the weeds and when she does the boy finds that she looks stranger to him than she\u2019s ever seemed before. A peculiar and closed-off thing, a thing whose shape he\u2019d been trying to discern, when really it was just shapeless.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWho made this?\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy puts down his bag and opens it. He has a picnic\u2013boiled eggs, goat\u2019s cheese that crumbles in a tart avalanche against their tongues. Bread also, still warm somehow, and a bottle of wine.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMy ancestors,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen they first came here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTo show their enemies they endured.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe hands the bear girl an egg. She takes a bite, and then another.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSo they were beaten, and fled from somewhere?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFrom old Earth.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy signal to your enemies that you\u2019re still here?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTo show them they\u2019d failed. That my house still stood. That they\u2019d have to try, again and again, until they were certain we were done. And we\u2019d never been done.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe looks at him askance.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThis is about the beast, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy shrugs.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe. I just wanted to show you.\u201d He looks up. A gossamer spread of clouds veils the sun and he realizes what he\u2019s about to say is for him, not for her. \u201cI know we could evacuate. But we want to live here, where we can hear the world grow old. People say they\u2019re fighting for a place, <\/em> but what they\u2019re really fighting for is a time<\/em>. Places endure. The valley was here before my people, and it\u2019ll be here after. What\u2019ll pass is our time here. What\u2019ll pass is us<\/em>, ploughing and growing and fixing our old second-hand airscooters in the open air. And when we\u2019re gone, there\u2019ll never be anything like us, ever again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe girl takes some cheese and eats it and leans against the wall.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou can\u2019t fight the universe,\u201d she says. \u201cMy people learned that. Most of ain\u2019t never seen our homeworld. Never will. It had huge cities and ancient temples, the lot. Now me and my family\u2019ve gotta fight a bunch of oil men to stop \u201cem from digging up our carrot patch. Carrots, by the way, we got from your <\/em>lot.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019re you saying?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat I\u2019m saying is\u2013the universe is huge and unfair. It\u2019ll wipe out entire species, it\u2019ll shit on entire civilizations, it\u2019ll destroy whole planets. It doesn\u2019t think twice. It doesn\u2019t think at all. The good don\u2019t win. The bad don\u2019t win. In the end, nobody wins but the strong. I see people like you struggling against the beast and all I can think is, what if it just crashes through the trees? Then what? All your hard work, gone. And worse…\u201d She pauses.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo. You\u2019ll be pissed off.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTell me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe turns to him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd why shouldn\u2019t he? I want you to survive. But this planet belonged to that beast. That beast and its brothers and sisters and enemies and prey and predators. And you killed them all. All of them, \u201ccept this one, maybe four others. So\u2013have you thought, maybe you\u2019re<\/em> the bad ones here? Maybe that Trapezoid your father\u2019s built isn\u2019t bad because it\u2019s going to bring the beast to the valley, but because it\u2019s a weapon built to kill a creature that should be able to go wherever it wants?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy thinks about this, nostrils flaring and closing. Then he shakes his head, twice and with finality.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cMaybe. But my people have done nothing to deserve death. Killing those beasts may have been unjust, but destroying our valley won\u2019t make it right.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s right depends on where you\u2019re looking from, is what I\u2019m saying.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m looking out for my people. There\u2019s no other view that matters to me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe bear girl smiles.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSpoken like a true lord,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \nHe touches her face. He traces the spread of purplish freckles by her hairline and a dusting of turquoise motes on the inside of her lower lip. He loses himself briefly in the mica-bright flecks in her oversized eyes, twice the size of a human\u2019s. She leans her face against his palm.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI love you,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \nThe girl pulls her face back.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI know you think so,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI know I do.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou don\u2019t know me. You met me in the forest and we mated and spoke. That\u2019s it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI don\u2019t know any other word for the feeling I feel for you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe girl shakes her head.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLove ain\u2019t just about feelings,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \nShe watches him, sad and silent, and he sees she thinks he\u2019s a fool. He sees also that this is the last time he\u2019ll see her. He aches at the thought, but only for a short while.\n<\/p>\n \n \nSpring dessicates into summer. The army establishes a base down in the foothills where the peaks meet the floodplains and the low grumble of helicopters and tanks judders endlessly in the night. Some of the soldiers percolate up to the valley and get drunk and pick fights with locals. The boy\u2019s father confronts one of the generals outside the manor the next day. The general, a vast man with the looks and poise of a shaved boar, listens to him bellow with a small smile and then steps up and speaks in a voice as low and steady as the gurgle of the river in the valley. The father goes pale.\n<\/p>\n \nThe soldiers stop coming after that, but his father never seems to recover. Two days later all the important people leave the house and take their secretaries and files and computers and uplinks with them. They leave a mess the servants take three days to clean up. The father spends the entire time on the balcony, silent, chain smoking and sipping on tumblers of whisky that\u2019re never fuller than a finger or so, but never empty either. None of them bid him farewell.\n<\/p>\n \n \nUp in the forest they finish little three bunkers and a storeroom. They have a ritual now\u2013plotting the beast\u2019s approach on a map. The more they do this the less they understand the beast\u2019s thinking. Five hundred years, the villagers grumble, and we still can\u2019t figure out what it wants.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy not just let it be?\u201d says one of the immigrants. \u201cWhy not just learn to live with it? Isn\u2019t it a natural disaster like any other?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe live with landslides \u2018n avalanches,\u201d says the other. \u201cThis ain\u2019t no different.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt is,\u201d say the baker twins, in the same tone they explain to children why they can\u2019t have cupcakes for free. \u201cAvalanches got victims. Them beasts got prey.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nOne evening the boy returns to the manor under the cover of darkness. All the way down the hillside he\u2019s been practicing his mantra in preparation for encountering his father. You are worthy. You are good. Not all words need responses<\/em>. They\u2019re like spinning blades. If he says them fast enough, in his head, they deflect his father\u2019s shouting. They pick up speed as he stables his horse.\n<\/p>\n \nAs he comes out though he hears crying round the back of the building. He stalks around in the twilight. The grass is summerdry beneath his boots and the air carries the first hint of autumn\u2019s distant sharpness. He finds the protege, face buried in her hands, sobbing with enough force to set her body aquiver. She looks up and wipes her face and tries to compose herself, but it\u2019s hopeless.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGo away,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy turns to go. Then he stops.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo,\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFine. I will.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWherever you go, they\u2019ll hear you crying.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe blinks and tries to hold back the tears, but they ooze out anyway. Even in the darkness he sees she\u2019s an ugly crier\u2013her face reddish and crumpled and glistening with moisture. Perhaps that\u2019s why she\u2019s always expressionless, he thinks. Because all her expressions consume her.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThen go where you can\u2019t hear me.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhy\u2019re you crying?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m not crying.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy chuckles and goes back to the stable. He comes back with a mug of water. The protege takes it and scoops back her hair and drinks. Then she grimaces.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat is this?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s stream water. That’s the mineral you’re tasting, city girl.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe drinks again.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s salty.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd yet it quenches your thirst.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe smacks her lips, and glugs down the rest.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI know why you\u2019re crying,\u201d says the boy.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo you don\u2019t.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe\u2019s angry. He\u2019s lost control of his own project, and he\u2019s taking it out on you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe gives him a look, somewhere between alarm and disbelief, half-blurred in the gathering dark. He can tell from her face that she thinks it\u2019s a trap. He keeps going.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe\u2019s been doing it to me my entire life. If you want to be close to him, you have to learn to take it. You think I\u2019ve never felt it?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou\u2019re always so obedient.\u201d She pauses, considering her next word. \u201cSubservient.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s easier.\u201d The boy sighs. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know the first thing about me either.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe protege drops her voice.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe\u2019s always talking about you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe is?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe nods, and gulps, and wipes her face.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAlways. In the capital, it\u2019s one of his favourite subjects. His son. His precious son. So close to the land, such a representative of his people.\u201d She looks at him askance, briefly malign. \u201cHis perfect boy, who doesn\u2019t even have to work for his approval.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cLike I said,\u201d says the boy. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know me. I could be anyone, and he\u2019d say the same thing, just as long as I was his blood.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey sit for a long awkward moment on the threshold of something neither of them expected. Then the protege cricks her neck and wipes her face again and says: \u201cWhat\u2019re you really doing up in the forest?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy stands, and holds out his hand.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019ll show you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe stares at his fingers as if they were some odd mollusk that had just appeared on her doorstep, glistening and alien. In the end she comes, but she doesn\u2019t touch his hand.\n<\/p>\n \n \nOn her first visit the protege spends an hour or so asking questions and then listening to the answers with great absorption. Sometimes she writes things down in a little booklet. Those who speak to her always come away smiling and feeling important.\n<\/p>\n \nThe next day, she joins them at dawn and sets to work. She finds the group of young men are supposed to be organizing logistics face-down and snoring with their dirty feet sticking out of their tents like strangely shaped mushrooms. By the time they wake the protege\u2019s taken control of the whole operation. They mill around for a while, sheepish and sleepy, watching her work. Then she snaps at them, and they rush into action.\n<\/p>\n \nBy the end of the week they\u2019re her most loyal lieutenants.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy watches all this with a satisfaction that takes him by surprise. He doesn\u2019t like it, or the peculiar warmth he starts feeling for her. It\u2019s only at the end of the week that he realizes why. He\u2019s clustered with a few others under a net, watching footage from the monster\u2019s approach. A newscaster is in a helicopter, yelling over the sound of the rotors about how the villages in the creature\u2019s path were evacuated, but the beast changed its course and now it was clear they\u2019d been moved right into where it was going. Its feet, eightfold and as thick as ochrewood trunks, had crushed two or three hundred refugees.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cPeople are saying that the villagers were betrayed,\u201d intones the reporter. \u201cBetrayed by the same incompentence that has turned this latest attack into a holocaust, that has thus far claimed four and a half thousand lives.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThose poor people,\u201d says someone.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShoulda done what we\u2019ve done.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot everyone\u2019s this lucky.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCan\u2019t blame the gods for your stupidity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCan you blame them for bad luck?\u201d says the boy.\n<\/p>\n \nThe villagers shuffle.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNo, milord. I mean. I\u2019m just saying\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy pats the man on the shoulder. A big fellow, another ex-soldier, far more delicate than a man with his size or past should be.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s quite alright,\u201d says the boy. \u201cI was just wondering too. Who to blame for all this? Because if there\u2019s no one to blame, then there\u2019s no one in control of anything, right?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe villagers nod, eyes wide.\n<\/p>\n \nAfterwards the boy heads into the forest by foot. Even in the lightnessness he knows the path. HHe knows not to trust his eyes too much in a world where shadows move on shadows and the only light is inconstant bioluminescence intended for inhuman eyes. He heads through the cold tunnel to the bear girl\u2019s room. It\u2019s empty. He waits a while, watching the fish cruising in the black depths of the lake. They seem to know their world better than he knows his. At least, they know what matters most. Which vibrations to seek, and which to avoid. Which currents to follow, and which to swim against. They needn\u2019t think about any of it, nor think about thinking itself. Just like the protege, they seem to know what they were put here to do, and how to do it. He, on the other hand, thinks too much. Or not enough. He can\u2019t tell which yet.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThey spot a sharkwolf one night. A skinny and stilt-legged beast stalking along with its triangular muzzle to the ground, unused to the spongy forest floor. It pauses and returns their gaze, a sad-looking creature with heavy eyes, sharing a moment of silent grief with the humans. We\u2019re all scared, it seems to say. We\u2019re all just small things adrift on a heartless sea.\n<\/p>\n \nThe next day they find four dead goats. One of them\u2019s been ripped in half, its guts draped like oily party favours down the street.\n<\/p>\n \nOther creatures follow. A flock of pugbats it streams overhead for an hour with endless fluid distortions, a noneuclidian sentience trying desperately to signal danger to those below. A cluster of ragged foxes dig around the bins in town. Tin-otters, sleek and chattering, slip joyously down the glassy reaches of the river as if en route to a holiday. As the beast draws near even the creatures of the valley flee along the dulled ridges, predator and prey wandering in wary truce through the morning fog.\n<\/p>\n \nDown near where the humans live their chattels and pets wail and bark and howl. They jump fences and break their legs. They gore each other in their panic. The boy\u2019s horse bolts one day and torpedoes down the path from the manor and breaks both its front legs against an army truck. Soldiers come pouring out, stunned and apologetic. He just came out of nowhere, they say. We\u2019re so sorry, they say.\n<\/p>\n \nThere\u2019s blood on the truck\u2019s grill, and bits of shredded skin.\n<\/p>\n \nAfter they put a bullet in its head the boy stays by the horse\u2019s cooling body. The tears slow and then dry up altogether but the wound within him has only just begun to bleed. He runs his hands down the smooth bulge of his friend\u2019s dead cheek, and the bristle atop his jagged foreleg. The thought of them warm and alive and joyous are like undertow, and he lets himself be dragged under.\n<\/p>\n \nAt dusk the protege comes down the path and crouches by him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cCome,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s getting cold. They have to take him.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cGet away from me,\u201d he hisses.\n<\/p>\n \nBut she doesn\u2019t. She persists and he succumbs, like limestone to water. She walks by him up to the house and then up to the verandah where the father\u2019s sitting, red-eyed and glowering, in the semidark.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhere\u2019ve you been?\u201d he growls.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHis horse died,\u201d says the protege.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot you.\u201d He points, ice clinking in his tumbler of whisky. \u201cHim.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe protege sets her jaw.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHis horse died. He was tending to it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou speak for him now? And where have you been?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThere was nothing to do here, father.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cFather? You\u2019re not my daughter. Address me properly.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe blinks.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYes, milord.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy sniffs, and straightens.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAnd what\u2019re you doing,\u201d he says, \u201cSitting here in the dark?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe father takes a slow slug of whiskey, eyes fixed on the boy.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat?\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI said, what are you doing here, sitting in the dark?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat\u2019s it to you what I\u2019m doing?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe beast\u2019s coming. The villagers are panicking. What\u2019re you doing\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe beast isn\u2019t coming. It\u2019s hundreds of miles away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cIt\u2019s ninety-one miles away. We heard it bellowing the other day.\u201d The boy points up the hillside. \u201cIf you go up there, you can see it. Did you know that? Over across the hills, in the distance.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSo? If your mother was here\u2013\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cShe\u2019d be in the village, tending to her people. Not sitting here in the dark, drinking like a loser.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nA pause. The father gets up, slowly. The protege flinches. The boy begins to cower and then realizes that there\u2019s no better time for him to feel this pain, now that he\u2019s been numbed by something else. He squares up. His father looms over him like a tsunami.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cSay that again?\u201d he says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t quite hear you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy holds his gaze. Then he looks away. His father runs his tongue over his teeth, and nods. He returns to his chair and downs the rest of his whiskey and ignores them.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy walks into the house and through onto the balcony and sits with his back to the railings. The protege joins him.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m a coward,\u201d he whispers.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cRetreat in the face of a superior enemy isn\u2019t cowardice, it\u2019s wisdom,\u201d says the protege. \u201cThe good don\u2019t always win.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe glances at her. In the early evening glow, she looks as if she\u2019s exactly where she should be. Then, in the distance, a great droning roar. It tears the night in half for a long and scathing moment and takes a long time to fade.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow much longer?\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cTwo days,\u201d says the protege.\n<\/p>\n \nHe buries his face in his hands. She reaches out for him and hesitates. She pulls her hand back. The boy doesn\u2019t see, but this is what happens.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe boy wakes to a high-pitched and violent howl that somehow provokes identical responses from down in the valley and beyond.\n<\/p>\n \nSirens.\n<\/p>\n \nHe rushes out and finds the protege already on her way down the stairs, bundled against the crystal cold of the autumn predawn.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019ll get the bunkers opened,\u201d she says, sprinting into the forest. Soon all that\u2019s left of her is the dwindling crunch of her shoes on the gravel.\n<\/p>\n \nHe heads into the village. Thinking, it\u2019s too soon. The beast should still be a day away. Then he hears the distant rasp of its breath and the strangely fluid ripple of its colossal legs shredding trees as it comes. It\u2019s almost light by the time he\u2019s woken everyone and bundled them out of their houses and up the narrow paths to the forest. Two fighters roar overhead trailing cones of fire from their tails and a few moments later the beast roars and the sonic stormfront of the noise barrels down the valley, so powerful it buffets hair and stills people\u2019s hearts in their chests. Children cry and men shiver and women cast longing glances down at the terracotta rooftops of the village they were born in and grew up in and they know in their fearful hearts will soon be supine at the monster\u2019s feet.\n<\/p>\n \nA moment later the creature crests a distant mountain at speed and half-tumbles into the valley before. A giant spidery thing that seems to decide what its precise shape will be only when its feet hit the ground. A weird disk-shaped cloud hovers over its head. Its face looks like that of some rabid dog skinned and stretched over a skull three times bigger than the one it came from. Pieces of it fall to the ground in great gobs and burn the forest without flame and the stink of this unnatural combustion wafts over the crepuscule in nauseating miasma.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy feels an odd warmth on his back and hears a rumble. He looks over his shoulder and sees the Trapezoid crackling to life in the distance. Great tongues of lightning lick the air and a mouth of cloudless sky gapes overhead. The thudding of the beast\u2019s approach speeds up and soon it breaks into an impossible gallop that takes it across valleys that would take an hour for a human to traverse in one or two strides.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy takes a step towards the bunkers. Then he stops and screws up his face and sprints down to the manor. Halfway down he sees the protege coming up towards him. She\u2019s crying.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWhat happened?\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNothing.\u201d She grabs his arm. \u201cCome on.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI\u2019m going for my father.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to come.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHow do you know?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nShe grabs him by the shoulders and fixes her eyes on him and he sees the livid stripes of an open-palmed strike emblazoned on her face.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to come. He says we\u2019re being fools.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy looks down at the sweet old building and sees someone standing in a window, watching him through the curtains. A moment later the beast erupts over the crest to the left and thunders down the slope, obliterating rock and shredding trees and churning the soil six feet deep. It sweeps the manor away as if it was made of wet cardboard. It crushes one part of the village, and then another, and leaves wreckage smeared along the ground like roadkill. Then it charges the Trapezoid. The last the boy sees of it is its vast silhouette haloed against a titanic blue-white blaze.\n<\/p>\n \nHe turns to run into the forest, but it\u2019s too late.\n<\/p>\n \n \nThe boy regains consciousness a few minutes later, in another world. His first thought is for the bear girl. Then he remembers that she\u2019s gone and that he hasn\u2019t missed her in the slightest and the guilt that comes with that thought is a wan and shivering thing that doesn\u2019t survive long.\n<\/p>\n \nBlack snow is falling from the sky.\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy gets up and watches the flecks descend and realizes it\u2019s some sort of ash. Talcum-soft and ethereal and smelling vaguely like hot metal, it settles on his skin with a brief warmth and crumbles. After a while it irritates him, like unwanted kisses, and he heads back down into the valley.\n<\/p>\n \nThe protege\u2019s nowhere to be seen.\n<\/p>\n \nHe wanders down, shell shocked. The devastation before him is as he expected. A black film coats everything and everything stinks of ruin. A series of great gouges scar the ancient landscape, green skin giving way to moist red-brown soil in mimicry of human lacerations. The manor\u2019s gone. Half the village is gone. Far off a seething tower of dense black smoke rises where the Trapezoid used to be. Overhead it hits some jet stream and disperses in a malign black hood over the landscape. Crumpled beneath it, at the foot of the smoking Trapezoid, is the ruined corpse of the beast. Its massive legs crooked and cracked, its torso leaking a million gallons of blazing ichor into the infected land about it. The boy can smell it from where he is, a stench born aloft on the same winds carrying the Trapezoid\u2019s wreckage.\n<\/p>\n \nThe villagers come stumbling out of the bunkers a few minutes after he finds his first body. An old woman he may or may not recognize, lying half in one of the trenches the beast\u2019s feet carved. Where her left leg and half her left hip should be there\u2019s nothing. The baker twins come jogging down the hillside, grinning, waving their thick arms. They pile onto him and crush him between them.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cWe won!\u201d says one.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe beast is dead!\u201d says the other\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cThe beast\u2019s dead, little lord!\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey part, and look up at the manor, and then back at the boy.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cNot little lord anymore.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYea. Lord. Lord of the Valley.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThey bow, grave. The boy blinks and looks away from the body.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cHave you seen my wife?\u201d he says.\n<\/p>\n \nThey point.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cUp in the pastures, behind the manor.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nThe boy walks back up past bewildered and then cheering crowds pouring out of the forest. It takes him a long time to navigate the jollity. How can they be so pleased in the face of such destruction, he wonders? Then he realizes: they didn\u2019t think they\u2019d survive. They didn\u2019t think anyone cared.\n<\/p>\n \nSomehow, his grief lightens.\n<\/p>\n \nHe finds the protege up in the field, sitting on the slope with a laptop balanced on her knees. She\u2019s typing furiously, frowning, hair flecked with black ash. She looks up briefly when he approaches, and then back down.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cI was looking for you,\u201d he says\n<\/p>\n \nShe clicks. \u201cI can\u2019t get a connection.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cYou probably won\u2019t for a while.\u201d He sits next to her. She smells vaguely of blood, and sweat. \u201cWhat do you need it for?\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cDidn\u2019t you see? It\u2019s chaos. We\u2019ll need to make sure we have supply routes. We\u2019ve got enough to last us for a week or two but we need to evacuate the wounded.\u201d She blinks, and wipes away tears, and sets her mouth into a hard gash. \u201cI saw dead down there. We\u2019ll need to move them too.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHer laptop pings. Her eyes widen, and she begins typing furiously. He watches her for a while, feeling something kindle. Something he isn\u2019t willing to put a name to yet.\n<\/p>\n \n\u201cAlright,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ll go start organizing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \nHe looks up at the forest. It sighs in the wind, unchanged, enduring. The beast\u2019s passage will be just a brief chapter in its story, the boy thinks. As will he. As will they all.\n<\/p>\n \nAs he stands the protege squeezes his hand. An unthinking gesture, swift and familiar. The boy heads back to the village. The black snow doesn\u2019t seem to bother him anymore.\n<\/p>\n Subodhana Wijeyeratne is an academic and author living and working in Tokyo Japan. He’s been writing speculative fiction for nearly twenty years. You can follow his latest at subowijeyeratne.com. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" His father\u2019s side of the family says that the boy grew up half-wild in the forest. But wouldn\u2019t they have too, if they\u2019d lived where he did? They wouldn\u2019t have been able to resist the fluting trunks of the plaster-birches, serried to eternity before the subsiding sun, or the swish of tails in the undergrowth …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69780,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,20076],"tags":[20077],"class_list":["post-137944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-tcl-36-summer-2020","tag-the-colored-lens-36-summer-2020","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/69780"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=137944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137945,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137944\/revisions\/137945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=137944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=137944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=137944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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