Unknown

By the same author

The Carving Circle

The Book of Dirt

Gretchen Heffernan

This edition published 2017

First published 2015

Scrutineer Publishing

www.scrutineer.org

info@scrutineer.org

Book and Cover Design:

The Scrutineer, Rachael Adams.
Fonts: Adobe Garamond, Bree serif.

Printed and bound by IngramSpark, on 50lb uncoated paper.

SCB Distributors

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Gardena, CA 90248

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ISBN 978 0 9956843 9 3

Printed by Ingram

The right of Gretchen Heffernan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author and publisher.

A geographical note. The author has extended the chalk cliffs of the South Downs to Rye, East Sussex for the sake of the setting. She has also shortened the distance between Rye, East Sussex and Hastings, East Sussex.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Dedication

To Mike, Eddy and Ayla with love and wonder.

The Organic Matters Series

The Book of Dirt

The Book of Insects

Prologue

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Mark 8:36

Once there was a speck of dirt caught inside a universal drift that travelled through great vats of blackness, flamboyant gasses and elemental showers without thought or aim. And whenever the dirt floated over the planet that spun like a perfect marble, it felt a gentle pull towards the swells of blue, soft and serious as a whispered promise, which made the dirt stir. Otherwise it felt nothing and this pattern continued for eons. Then a star exploded and a storm of light with fierce lassos struck the dirt through the Earth’s burning atmosphere, where it began to fully awaken.

The heaviness of the beautiful planet hit the dirt like an anvil and it crashed into the sea. The water was a salve to its burns and the dirt began to experience further flashes of light, of dappled consciousness, surging like currents of electricity on the ocean floor.

It was then that it saw her.

To the untrained eye she was ordinary and barnacled. An insignificant rock on the bottom of the seabed, but the dirt sensed a true magnificence inside her. And it was right, for when she opened her mouth; it saw that she was lined with something silver and luminous, like a soul.

The dirt took a chance.

It plunged into her and attached like a thorn inside an armpit. It was awkward at first, but the dirt persisted because it could feel itself growing and by love, by risk and intervention, it became a pearl, which was more than it had ever dreamt possible.
But the truth about dreams is that once they’re believed in, they’re already half fulfilled, so faith in impossible things is vitally important. It’s crucial if you want to evolve and although the pearl longed to reach its full potential, it had come to a point where it found it could advance no further on its own. And so, another truth was shown to the pearl, the truth that none of us are truly independent of one another, of the world, none of us can act alone.

We need others.

Ansley was at the bus stop when Jude and the Keepers found him, which was ironic, because the buses hadn’t been running for years and the village, like most villages, had been deserted since the beginning of The Transformation Age.

He rarely left the safety of the woodland, however, the majority of the contaminated people had died by now, so the threat of attack was slim and he needed paper for his poems. This village had a post office and he hoped the contaminated had spared the stockpiles of paper that he envisioned. There was no longer a societal need for paper now anyway; burning was unnecessary as there were plenty of fires around to keep warm and nobody was left to write letters.

The fires started after the earthquakes had caused the fracking wells to leak methane and not even heavy rains could extinguish their blaze. The pools of fire were a malleable blue, like clouds of Bunsen burners slowly rolling over the land and erupting into yellow excited peaks as they made their way through the soils that fed them. This meant that there were few obstacles to blockade the wind, so it stripped the burnt earth of its remaining soil, substance and life. Only the toughest things held on.

Ansley stared at the blue distance. He was safe in the South Downs with its chalky foundation and absence of methane. He didn’t know the inferno intimately, but he was all too familiar with its consequential wind. It’s strange. You can never predict the things that will shape you after catastrophe. He wouldn’t have guessed it would be the wind, but he felt it, element by element, shaping the world, and his life, anew.

The rain blew sideways and stung his eyes, so he ducked inside a bus shelter to wait out the worst of it. The metal slats were missing from the seat, but the glass on the roof and the sides was remarkably intact, though cracked in many places and grimy. He was watching a raindrop streak down the grime and bounce off patches of mould like a warped pinball, when he saw a light dipping in and out of the dark streets.

At first he thought he was hallucinating the bus twisting into view as a serpentine creature of fire and glass. “No way,” he thought, “that can’t be a bus.” Ansley could hardly remember the sound of an engine, any engine at all, and yet, there he was, at the bus stop with a bus approaching. It was as if the oil hadn’t run out and he felt nauseous with déjà vu as he watched the bus slowly drive down the High Street. As it drew closer, Ansley could hear someone shouting promises of food, shelter and clean drinking water through a megaphone. He pulled his balaclava over his head and raised his hand as if he’d been waiting for a ride all along.

An old London bus with only its windows scrapped clean of graffiti, stopped in front of him and opened its doors. Ansley felt the hydraulic rush of warm air and nostalgic scent of diesel. He winced at the acidity. A weak and watery glow lit the strange faces of its passengers. At a glance they were a mix of ages and genders, sharing the sunken cheeks of malnourishment and wide, sallow, motionless eyes. The survivors of tragedy adapt familial traits. By comparison, Ansley felt that he didn’t look so hideous.

Only the man with the megaphone was alert and vivacious. He was impossibly tall, wore a top hat, a mauve velvet suit with flared trousers and black cowboy boots. Above him, a metal hook had been bolted into the ceiling and from it hung a huge crystal paraffin-light chandelier that flicked prisms everywhere like shards of broken glass. He stood at the top of the steps and peered down at Ansley, his suit was crawling with refracted rainbows. Ansley was too stunned to think.

“There you are!” the man said. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long? There were delays on the M5, bloated cows, wandering lunatics, rabid goats and whatnot, but as they say, better late than never,” he smiled and his teeth were clean and white. “I’m Jude,” he said as he stuck out his hand. “And you are?”

“Ansley,” he said as he shook Jude’s hand.

Jude’s face twitched with recognition.

“A moment please,” said Jude as he turned around, reached up with a tinkling and detached an arm off the chandelier to shine over Ansley.

He started his cross-examination at Ansley’s feet and slowly began weaving his way up to his face. The waxy fumes from the paraffin-oil flame of the chandelier arm filled Ansley’s nostrils and made his pupils shine the colour of rose quartz.

“Would you mind?” Jude pointed to Ansley’s balaclava and with great reluctance; Ansley lifted it from his face.

Ansley looked the other way. He couldn’t stand to witness Jude scrutinize his appearance. Ansley was completely devoid of sweat glands and hair. His body was skeletal with elongated limbs and his skull was round with a wide forehead. His chin was abnormally protruded, as were his cheekbones and his eyes were pink with dark shadows underneath. His teeth were deformed. He looked like the mythical dweller of a deep abyss, and in a way, that’s exactly what he was, as he spent most of his time in a hidden and dark woodland glade.

He had been born with a severe form of ectodermal dysplasia; a simple step-change in the DNA. His disease had mutated to the extent that it prevented him from being in the sunlight. Exposure to sunlight caused his skin to instantly blister and boil. His parents had learned this the hard way and he had bubble-pocked scars up and down his pale body to prove it.

“I remember you,” said Jude. “I let you live.”

It was true; Jude had allowed Ansley and his father to live. Many of Jude’s Keeper’s had felt that Ansley should not have been born and ought to be eradicated for the sake of purity. They called him Dark Ansley and argued that although he hadn’t ingested his disease, he was contaminated all the same by birthright, and that this could falter a perfect evolution.

But Jude understood that evolution always began first with a mutation and that species abnormalities were usually the catapults of change. However, the need for a mutant wasn’t the reason why Jude had spared his life. It was much more tactical than that. For keeping Ansley alive had helped preserve local superstition and fear, thus enhancing the need for a prophet and Jude’s position of power.

There was another reason why Jude hadn’t killed Ansley, something closer and personal that he didn’t entirely understand. He recognized a fellow outcast. There was something about himself in the boy, something misunderstood that reminded him of his own fall from grace and the lengths he took to prove himself worthy. His achievements had been a strive for acceptance on any level, horrid or holy, and Jude was curious to witness the path Dark Ansley would take to validate himself to his demons.

“So the boy with the contaminated genes has survived,” he said. “How very, very interesting.”

Jude put the torch under his own chin. His eyes were outlined in thick kohl.

“Won’t you join us?” He tipped off his hat and bowed.

Ansley’s father had spoken about the Prophet Jude with guarded respect even though he admitted disagreeing with his ideas and radicalism. Still, Jude had treated them with fairness. When the new maps were drawn, Ansley’s father’s land had fallen within Jude’s territory, the only habitable territory in the country, and Jude had allowed them to stay. They would have died without his generosity.

Ansley had never met Jude and felt a storm of gratitude, horror and curiosity as he looked at the bowed head in front of him. It was as bald as his own, yet with a tattoo of an octopus wrapped around it like a bonnet. There were two tentacles that curled around his temples and the air that surrounded him was a womb of terrifying excitement.

Ansley sensed the rules were different for Jude, not merely his ability to bend or break them, but literally different, as though he were breathing from somewhere else. Jude waved the crystal arm in front of Ansley’s face.

“Welcome,” Jude stepped to the side and allowed Ansley to board the bus.

The wind thrashed the rain against the shelter like a premonition and for a moment Ansley felt afraid to move. That’s when he noticed the basket of fruit. It was a selection of apples, pears, grapes and strawberries. Jude followed Ansley’s gaze.

“Have I rendered you speechless?” Jude laughed and the wick sputtered. His back teeth were full of metal fillings.

It was true. Ansley hadn’t seen so much food in one place in years. His mouth watered at the thought of a strawberry. He had been subsisting on fungi, roots and greens for as long as he could remember and was weak with hunger. His hunger mesmerized him.

“Where did you find it?” Ansley asked as he climbed up the bottom step and looked down the aisle. The bus was half full with passengers intensely eating while the spectral light of prisms bounced off their foreheads.

“Ah! That’s my secret, now come in, come in, it’s still raining and I’m wearing velvet of all things,” he took Ansley’s hand and pulled him up the remaining steps. “Close the door,” he said to the driver, but the driver stalled and turned towards Ansley.

“Not him,” said the driver. “I know him. Recognize the eyes. Used to live in the village, he did, and there’s no colour in him, like he’s dead, only worse. ‘Dark Ansley’ they called him. He’s a bad omen and I’ll not be having him,” he said as he tightened his hands around the steering wheel.

His knuckles had the J. U. D. E. tattoo of a Keeper. There were rumours about Jude’s personal bodyguards and none of them fluffy and nice.

“I beg your pardon,” Jude approached the Keeper and put a pale hand gently across his throat. “You’ll not be having him? Did I ask for your opinion?”

The Keeper went rigid and a crown of sweat beaded across his forehead.

“Answer the question,” said Jude. His calm manner was harrowing.

“No sir. You did not ask for my opinion,” whispered the Keeper.

“Correct. Now let me explain something,” Jude pointed the crystal arm at Ansley. “The fact that this young man is alive is proof enough of his worthiness. Remember, we are on the brink of evolution and every survivor adds another rung to the ladder that will eventually spin and lead to divinity. You know nothing. You understand nothing. You would die without me. That’s why I hired you. Now shut up.” He faced Ansley once more. “I do apologise for this outburst of prejudice, but they aren’t vetted for their intelligence as you can plainly see. I am commander here and I wholeheartedly welcome you. Now tell me, where have you been living?”

“In the woods,” said Ansley.

“A true survivalist, I like it. So, is there anyone else with you? Anyone at all? Your father?”

“No,” said Ansley and the thought of his father dropped through him as though he were an empty well. “No one is left.”

“Perfect,” said Jude. “Cheer up. Here, have an apple,” he said and threw it up in the air.

Ansley caught it in one hand. He looked back at the cold and wet darkness beyond the bus door and the desire for food overtook the fear tightening in his chest. I’ve lived through worse, he thought, nodded a thank you for the apple and walked to the back of the bus.

Nobody seemed to notice him. They were all too busy slavishly eating. The floor was littered with stems and sticky with fruit juices. This indifference towards his presence felt unusual and pleasant. He hadn’t been this close to people in ages and his heart pumped with anxiety. He sat down in an empty seat, crouched low and took a few deep breaths to calm himself. The bus was dry and warm. Be grateful, he thought, and bit into his apple.

So that was Jude. The Great Prophet. He watched him straighten up his top hat. It was strange that such an influential man should behave a bit like a deranged clown, although looks can be deceiving, Ansley reminded himself as he glanced at the window. He pulled up his balaclava and put his cheek against the window’s cool surface.

Her mirrored face was staring at his white reflection inside the dark glass. She smiled. And Ansley, like an eclipse, pulled down his balaclava and turned away.

Marianne had watched him board the bus. She often tagged along for a ride when her father was driving on one of Jude’s survivor searches. This was not out of adoration for her father for she recognized him as a yes-man and not a pioneer. She was not close to her father and had very little respect for his loyalty to Jude, a man she was acutely suspicious of. However, these excursions gave her a glimpse of the world outside of Rye and she felt a peculiar tug towards the calamity she witnessed. She had heard her father’s comments and was curious about this boy that he wouldn’t trust.

Could he really be Dark Ansley?

She looked up at his covered face as he passed down the aisle. His eyes reminded her of rabbits she had known, gentle rabbits, not evil at all. She had thought he was an exaggerated fable, a ghost story or something to keep the children out of the woods.

Once her father had told her that he’d seen him mushroom hunting, said that Dark Ansley just crouched there with luminous red eyes, silent as a tree stump and as gnarled. Her father described his face as similar to a mandrake root pulled from the ground, pallid, distorted and dirty. But it was obvious that he’d told her the story to scare her and she hadn’t believed him. And now, here he was, a survivor.

She thought of his pale reflection against the black window. It resembled the Japanese lantern she’d released as a child, round and white and internally lit into a moonless night. Her wishes had been innocent then, it was before Jude’s Project and the mass contamination. The peacefulness of this time pulsed through her and made her touch the pouch tied around her neck.

The pearl was inside her pouch, nestled and humming.

It placed the idea in her head.

Yes, she thought, he is the colour of my pearl and her chest filled with tenderness at the comparison like a drop of solvent to her apprehension.

Marianne had been ten years old when Jude severed his Keepers from modern society. Food was becoming scarce and raids were becoming common, so they felt grateful to be moving to the safe fertile grounds of Rye. The disease of fear had spread quicker than anything else and infected the brains of those with healthy bodies. It was a time when every person, diseased or not, had something eating away at their minds. That was five years ago and she’d never felt more alone.

She looked at her father’s face inside the convex mirror and watched him while he drove. People could be so cruel and closed to lives they didn’t understand.

Would her father ostracise her if he knew about her visions?

If he knew how the pearl spoke to her?

She suspected he’d do whatever Jude told him to do. She decided there and then to be Ansley’s friend.

Jude picked up his megaphone and the bus jerked to a start. Ansley’s balaclava was heavy and wet, but he kept it on for fear of making the girl behind him uncomfortable. He hadn’t meant to scare her. Kind people generally smile at him before they involuntarily cringe. It may have been a long time since he’d been around humans, but their responses to his appearance were emblazoned on memory like hot iron against rawhide.

The bus entered a thick gully of hedges and stopped when it came to a crossroads. A directional sign for Winchelsea and Rye stood in front of them like a wooden weathervane. The bus turned towards Rye and soon the rolling fields of the South Downs were visible. In the distance, on top of a hill much higher than the hedge, Ansley could just make out the shape of a watching stag.

There was oil the last time Ansley was in Winchelsea and he and his father had actually driven their Land Rover. They were driving through a field bumpy with rocks and tree roots, when a huge herd of albino deer stepped out in front of the vehicle and stood with authoritative grace.

His father slammed on the breaks and Ansley banged his head against the roll bar. The headlights shone directly into the deer’s knowing, blinking faces and Ansley froze in panic. His father slowly took his hand and squeezed it, then reached up and unfastened his rifle from its gun rack. If the deer were infected the smallest provocation could cause them to charge. A herd that size could destroy their truck; their communication to the world.

A few deer approached Ansley’s window. His father took aim, but hesitated when he saw that their mouths were free of froth and their hides were without sores and intact. They showed no sign of infection, rather appeared to be peaceful, silvered beasts that seemed to have manifested from the moon. When Ansley looked at them it was like witnessing himself as an animal. His father sensed it too.

“They recognize you as one of their own,” he said and lowered his rifle. “Beautiful creatures.”

His father often called him a beautiful creature and although Ansley knew the term was derived from kindness, the implication that Ansley was less human and more animal hurt him. Ironically, this animalistic trait that caused his offence was certainly the property that kept him alive.

On the drive home Ansley remembered watching silver tinted rabbits and vegetable patches flash through the gaps in the hedgerows as quick as photographs. He captured them in his memory as the time before the land was entirely contaminated, when nobody could conceive of the windfall of hardship that lay ahead.

That was seven years ago. He shrugged it off; he was a different person now, he knew hunger and death.

Ansley looked out the window of the bus. The tinkling of the crystal chandelier bumped dim shadows up and down the aisle that reminded him of how he imagined spirits might appear. He had been walking for so long that it felt strange to be inside a vehicle. It was the motion of being at sea and even the bruise-coloured hills seemed fluid somehow, as if their wounds had leaked. Ansley opened up his backpack and took out a large Ziploc bag containing a notebook and pen. He opened it up and wrote the lines:

Night brushes over

the burnt out houses

and deserted places

like tar across seeping wounds

will harden the poison in

until it’s dry enough to crack,

you.

The pewter rain and the chiming crystal proved a spellbinding combination and eventually, even Jude retired his megaphone and stood, as though at a helm, with the alert expectancy of arrival.

Ansley pulled his hood around his face and watched the world pass. The horizon blazed blue. He didn’t know where he was going, but at least he was dry and there was the promise of food. He had learnt to stop anticipating the future and live for the present. “Plans need to be flexible when life is erratic,” his father used to say.

It had been two years since his father’s death, and still, the image of his work boot sizzling inside the charred crater that had once been their house, could kick against his chest like a timepiece.

The back of the bus was dark. The small moon was behind the clouds. Marianne made sure her father wasn’t looking, then quickly slid into Ansley’s seat. He responded to her as though she were a wasp. He was shocked at the closeness of her, at her smell of damp hair and faint lavender. He pressed himself against the window, but she only moved closer and whispered.

“Don’t you know writing is illegal?”

He nodded his head, yes.

“Did Jude ask you to write something?” He shook his head no.

“So what were you doing then?”

He couldn’t speak to her. He had hardly spoken in two years. Words arrived readily through his hands and he wrote them, but seldom did they find their way to his throat. He gave her his open notebook and she read the poem he had written. She closed the book and handed it back to him silently.

“I see,” she said. “I see why you’d risk it. That’s incredible,” she said. “But keep it a secret. You’ll be banished, or worse, if you’re caught writing something outside of the doctrine. Especially if it’s personal,” her voice was barely audible and her breath smelled of berries.

She snuck a look in her father’s direction and slid back into her own seat. In the window she caught his reflection and put a finger to her lips. Shhh. Remember, she mouthed.

Her presence remained in his seat for a few seconds after she’d left as though she’d moved too fast for her molecules to catch her. It had happened quickly. Why did she care about his writing? Furthermore, why did she care if he was punished?

It hadn’t occurred to him that the old rules would still apply. He lived alone and wrote what he wanted. He couldn’t believe she had talked to him without gagging. The last female he’d spoken to had been his mother and even she had to hide her revulsion.

The ban on Expressions of Personal Self, or EPS’s, was a failing government’s desperate act to preserve normalcy through mass conformity. By limiting expression through the written word they hoped to prevent rebellion and turn back the clock to before the printing presses had liberated citizens from the domination of the church. It had worked during the Consumer Age after all. The propaganda started small and stated things like “Contamination is a mental disease that’s contagious.” Very soon people began to wonder if contamination was contagious from mind to mind and why not? Nobody knew much about contamination and the world had become unrecognisably absurd in a very short time. Anything seemed possible. Soon EPS’s were cautioned against and eventually, illegal.

All of this had little influence on Ansley. His father supported and encouraged his writing because he knew it eased Ansley’s loneliness, and anyway, they were so reclusive, that there was no chance of being caught. After the government’s collapse he assumed there was nobody left to enforce the old rules, let alone catch him.

Ansley watched the castle swell into view beyond the windswept hedges. It was a dour collection of four stone towers whose walls had partially crumpled over time. The word craggy came to mind. A few thin rectangular windows shone like open slashes of brilliance, so that it appeared both foreboding and warm. Ansley was filled with a disquieting intrigue as though he had spotted his name in a life-changing letter and couldn’t decide if he wanted to continue reading or not.

If the girl stays, he thought, I’ll stay.

The bus parked outside the castle. Most of the passengers were asleep with their bodies stretched across the seats and their heads propped up against the windows. Jude removed an arm from his chandelier and walked down the aisle kicking the soles of their feet.

“Okay, people, that’s enough of the formless and void! Wake up!” He pounded on the back of the seats.

Ansley, being nocturnal, hadn’t slept and surveyed his surroundings while the others woke. The castle was fortified by a tall stone wall that was falling apart. A spray of the sea leapt over it and shattered across a large puddle a few yards from an ironclad door. Stone castles don’t make good rafts, thought Ansley.

He knew Rye; his house had been on the other side of the woodland that encircled the village and he had fished its harbour with his father. There were few places that didn’t haunt him with their familiarity. His father was a resourceful man, and functioning by night, meant that they often had only each other for company.

The iron door opened and expelled a tiny man, no bigger than a toddler, carrying a folded coat and an umbrella. Ansley had never seen a man so small and couldn’t help watching him. The Keeper let him on the bus. He climbed up, stood on the back of the seat and snapped open a black mackintosh. Jude put it on and the little man jumped up on his shoulders, poised with the umbrella. The rustling on the bus stopped as everyone’s attention was focused on Jude and his shoulder escort.

“This is a cherub,” Jude explained. “Inside the castle you will find a whole tribe of them. I discovered their existence in the vine-choked wilds of the Amazon rainforest, years ago, when I was a budding microbiologist and they have been my companions ever since. It’s true that their baby faces can make them seem beguiling, but they’re actually undomesticated beings that are best left alone. They exist to be of service and eventually you will become so accustomed to their presence that you’ll no longer recognize it as unnatural. Now, exciting discoveries await you inside, so come along,” he said and walked off the bus.

The cherub opened the umbrella and held it over Jude’s head like a trained monkey. It was very strange and dreamlike and Ansley felt tempted to run away, but the girl was the first to walk off the bus and follow Jude. Ansley was fascinated, as well as hungry, so joined the others in a silent herd. The Keepers directed them through the iron door and inside the castle hall. It was round and damp. The water moving around the stone sounded like a settling stomach. There were thirty-three of them all together, thirty-three new survivors, packed inside a small room.

Their breath was panting and most of them were emaciated. In his mind Ansley lifted the roof like a lid and saw battered warriors, bone to bone, in a stone bucket. The room was quite dark, but for a single light bulb that sputtered like a candle catching damp. He searched for the girl and when he saw her, his heart sank.

She entered alongside the four other Keepers. The Keeper that had driven the bus put his hand assertively on the girl’s shoulder. Their resemblance was striking. How had he missed it before? He chastised himself. She was his daughter, which meant their friendship had ended before it’d begun and Ansley was stuck inside the castle.

The Keepers dispersed evenly along the walls. Their backs were erect and their hands were clasped in front of their abdomens. They were wearing black and silver shiny tracksuits, were well fed and outrageously lavish in comparison to the survivors. The girl disappeared into the crowd.

Jude walked in, stepped up onto a podium that made him at least five heads taller than everyone else, readjusted his top hat and cleared his throat with intent.

“OPULENCE!” He shouted and clapped his hands. “I’m ready for my opulence!”

The room was stunned, but for the digesting walls, and waiting. Then ten cherubs bounced in like circus performers. Nine of them stood on top of one another’s shoulders and erected like a centipede beside Jude. The tenth rode on the shoulder of a Keeper who was carrying the crystal chandelier. Number ten lit a cigarette, grabbed the chandelier, jumped up on top of the giant human centipede and held the chandelier over Jude.

White moths dancing inside the stone bucket, thought Ansley, but he didn’t dare to take out his notebook.

Jude took a deep breath and relaxed. “You are late,” he berated the tiny men through gritted, smiling teeth. “How hard is it to follow me around with a chandelier? I’m the one who has to do all the thinking for goodness sake. All I expect you to do is provide the atmosphere,” he said, then faced his audience and readjusted his voice to a higher level. “Welcome to Project Nigh! Now, I know you’re tired, but let’s just take a moment to look around and greet one another,” he clasped his hands and waited for a sufficient amount of time to pass.

Ansley studied the cherubs. They wore soiled togas and had bows with a quiver of arrows attached to their backs. They looked rank and stinky. The one on the top of the centipede didn’t seem fazed by holding up a chandelier four times his weight. He seemed unnaturally strong as he blew smoke rings, like little halos, above Jude’s head.

Jude continued. “These are the blessed faces of your fellow survivors. I ask that you treat one another with honour,” he removed his top hat, disintegrated the smoke rings and took a deep bow.

“Here, inside these sturdy walls, I will provide you with nourishment and rest, but it is up to you to foster companionship,” he fumbled for a moment and then lifted his hand and read his palm. “Ahem. Companionship is the cornerstone of this project, for you will be working together, rotating your skills and growing food.”

There was a nervous murmur in the crowd. Jude seized the excitement.

“That’s right! Food! Alongside this castle is one of England’s last remaining uncontaminated fields!” He punched his fist in the air and two more cherubs flew in holding ‘applause’ placards.

Jude adjusted his purple cravat. The Keeper’s started clapping and everyone else followed with an unsteady applause that grew in momentum.

“Thank you,” Jude raised his voice over the applause. “Thank you. But the credit belongs to you for surviving. Let me explain. Project Nigh is a simple organization that completely depends on your spirit and cooperation for success. The Keepers and I will shelter and guide you in return for your help in the field. This will enable us to survive the apocalypse together and emerge as a pure, uncontaminated species. It’s a simple division of labour that’s beneficial to all of us, a win-win,” he paused and smiled.

“But that’s enough talking for this evening. We are all exhausted and need a good night’s sleep. Of course, in the morning, you are under no obligation to stay, but I can’t imagine what you’d do otherwise,” he cleared his throat and ran a finger across his neck to indicate certain death.

“In a few moments the Keepers will show you to the dormitory, where there are rooms with clean linen for each of you, but first, I’d like to leave you with one final thought to muse upon: if death is natures greatest filter then you, my friends, must be here for a jolly good reason. Think about it. Goodnight and sweet dreams,” he said and the cherub centipede dismantled, flew up into a pinwheel formation and held the chandelier above him as he left the room. The Keepers followed.

A bug could be heard tapping against the light bulb. Slowly, the survivors began to acknowledge one another, and because eyes can infer the hearts knowledge, a branch of understanding spread from face to face and linked them to the weight of shared experience. It was a good idea. They could grow food and endure the future together. There would be a future.

Ansley’s appearance kept him from being the forthcoming sort, but he too felt uplifted, and peeked out from under his hood. The sense of companionship was tactile. It felt light and unexpected, like a sudden cloud in the room, and for a moment his ugliness was sheathed in the terrible fact that each of them had lived, while the ones they’d loved the most, had not.

He saw her scratching her head. She caught him staring, waved and walked towards him. He looked around for her father, but he was gone.

“My pets,” she said about her fleas then laughed a sad, yet resigned laugh, threw back her head and snorted. It was horse-like and strong. “Let’s just get this over with and out of the way,” she said and before he could object, she’d pulled down his hood, lifted his balaclava and, swallowing hard, studied his face without wincing. “Yep, that settles it,” she said of his demonic appearance, “we must be in hell.”

He snatched his balaclava back into place and stared at her in bewildered amazement. She was unbelievably brazen and he felt like slapping and hugging her at the same time. She just laughed.

“I like to leave people tongue tied,” said Marianne.

The Keepers emerged back into the hall to allocate rooms and hand out keys.

“Go on,” she said. “You don’t want to be left out. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

“Are you trying to get me killed?” Ansley managed to pry the words out of his mouth.

“Of course not, why?” She was visibly surprised that he’d asked such a question.

“Talking to you would give your father the excuse he needs to strangle me. He is your father, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes, but please don’t hold it against me. And, seriously, don’t worry. It’s practically a prerequisite that Keeper’s are all brawn and no brains. We can out smart him. Besides, you were writing poetry under Jude’s nose, which is nothing short of a death warrant. Wait a minute. You’re not afraid of me are you?”

“I’m not sure,” he lied.

He was completely afraid of her, quite simply because she didn’t seem afraid of him, which meant that she might unearth him. He feared the things he’d buried to stay alive, but not so much that he could resist her offer of friendship. He’d never had a friend. He’d only had his father.

“What’s your name?” He asked as the two Keepers walked over to them.

“Marianne,” she curtsied and approached the Keepers.

She took a handful of keys and began distributing them to the remaining survivors. Every key was tagged with a room number that she read aloud and recorded before she pressed it into each startled hand. Eventually she reached Ansley.

“And last but not least,” she said. “Room number thirty,” she wrote in the small book.

Her voice was purely secretarial and her cool eyes revealed nothing, as though she were proving to him that she could keep a secret.

“Goodnight everyone,” she said and left the hall without glancing back.

“Marianne” he repeated to himself. Marianne. And he felt her instantly become his one word for everything.

Marianne,

All the words are yours.

I imagine they will become a record of how I burned

myself up, like gunpowder inside a firecracker,

just to explode in your sky.

Nobody else has ever looked at me.

Nobody.

It was easy for the pearl to bring them together. The maps inside their minds reflected one another like mirrored signals. They each saw themselves as alone, yet strong, with a sense of something greater and beyond their current condition. It is why they recognized one another immediately. That’s how it works when humans meet. They respond to the image they see of themselves inside the other’s presence. And what Ansley and Marianne saw in one another was the thing they held the most secret, the most private: their shared ability to hear the world’s different frequencies. Ansley’s gateway was his poetry. For Marianne it was her visions, the very pearl itself.

Their dorm rooms were in a big two-storey extension attached to the castle that hadn’t been visible from where the bus had parked. The walls were a blinding white and the hallway was long and austere. The Keeper had explained that each keychain had a number on it that opened a corresponding door.

A large group of them shuffled into the hallway silently looking for their rooms. It felt a bit like checking yourself into a hospital, as it was very clinical and in complete contrast to the stone quirkiness of the castle itself. But Ansley wasn’t complaining. Since the bombing, he had been living in a makeshift camp in the woods and now he had a bed, a desk, a closet and his own toilet. This was like being swaddled in luxury.

He opened up his backpack, took out his notebook and immediately wrote down the poem he’d been mentally repeating from earlier. He didn’t want to forget it. He placed his lucky rock with the ammonite inside it and a pheasant feather on his desk, which eased the room of its sterility, then kicked off his shoes and laid down on the bed thinking about Marianne.

He couldn’t believe she’d pulled up his balaclava and didn’t recoil or even flinch. She looked him straight in the eye. Who was she? And what was this place? It was truly bizarre. Jude was an obvious eccentric, but that wasn’t what unsettled Ansley, for he sensed a deeper hidden meaning behind Project Nigh and that Jude wasn’t being entirely honest. He knew he should leave. That something dangerous was afoot, but Marianne compelled him to stay and his heart raced every time he thought of her. He was too anxious to rest, so rose from the bed and stood by the window.

He had a view of the sea where he once fished with his father. After the floods they had had to manoeuvre their boat around the chimneystacks and spinning weathervanes of the swallowed houses. It had been eerie to think of an underwater village corroding beneath them like a modern Atlantis. It had been an image that had haunted him afterwards, as it seemed to reflect how he lived his life, unseen and buried. Like treasure, his father had said, but Ansley suspected it was more like desertion.

And now the arrival of a tide that was unexpected, a bus, a girl and a trace of hope. Perhaps the worst was over, he thought as he watched the street below, unable to convince himself.

Jude and a group of Keepers walked uphill along a terraced row of workmen’s cottages. One by one they entered the front doors and turned on the lights. Electricity was a luxury and generator fed, but God only knew how they powered the generators, waves perhaps, or sunlight? His father had told him there was a community here, a religious sect isolated by its landscape.

Rye sat in between the South Downs and vast woodland. The sea spread out in front of it. Most of the main roads leading in and out had been bombed or earthquaked into rubble and only the lanes that the hedgerows or fires hadn’t reclaimed were usable. It was remote and lonely, but perhaps that’s why it had been saved. Like myself, he thought.

At the top of the street and perched like a weather-beaten sentry, a manor house looked out to sea. Jude, small as Ansley’s index finger, disappeared between two tall entry hedges and moments later, lit his windows. An old stone wall connected his house and the cottages to the castle and its courtyard, so that the whole enclosure formed an L. Inside this L spread the uncontaminated field, beyond which, was the dense woodland where Ansley had been living since the bombing, for he had needed a place to shelter from the daylight.

He watched the dark shadow of Jude move around the manor house. It slowed his heartbeat and made his skin feel cold. All the same, Jude had let them live and Ansley was intuitive enough to know that with his modified genes there were certainly people that wanted him dead. The confusion of genetic disorder and contamination was what kept Ansley secluded for so long.

Contamination had reached the end of its lifespan. Those that were infected now were highly noticeable with sores and erratic twitches. In the final stages, their muscles completely eroded and they could be found slumped into piles, waiting until their hearts stopped. On the one occasion when Ansley encountered a person in meltdown he had to think of them as a fallen boulder. He constantly had to teach his mind to play tricks in order to retain his sanity.

Yet, here they were, a small group of survivors that had escaped the windfall of apocalypse. It felt inconceivable, almost as though it were another hoax his mind was playing in order to believe persisting for a future was worthwhile. It must be worth it, he thought, we must make life worth what we’ve endured somehow. He thought of Marianne, a purpose outside of his daily survival, she produced in him a small shift of faith that brought his equilibrium closer to balance. He dared to hope. The fires burned like blue faraway cities. How many others were out there? Nobody like her. He knew that for certain.

When Ansley opened the door to the dining hall his chest gave a jolt at the sight of the food spread out on a long table near the kitchen. It was an extravagant breakfast banquet of pancakes and silver bowls of mixed berries, apples, peaches, porridge, fresh bread and jam. It was dark in the room, even though it was morning, as the day was overcast and the windows were narrow and few, so candelabras burned in the centre of each table. The room sparkled with the atmosphere of a party.

There were lots of people eating, chatting and laughing, some he noticed from the bus and others he’d never seen before. His pink eyes flashed from his balaclava like neon signs, but everyone was far too captivated by the food to notice. The selection was intoxicating. He decided to enjoy one thing at a time and sat in the corner, away from the windows, eating a plate of blueberries.

He was tired. The cherubs had sounded their trumpets at seven o’clock in the morning, which was torturous for a nocturnal being. He was going to have to adjust his sleeping patterns, but that would mean spending the day indoors. All the same, he’d been hungry, so he put on his balaclava and walked down to breakfast.

Marianne joined him. Her hair was shoulder length, black and messy. She wore a tee shirt with a picture of a finger up a nose that read ‘free handshakes.’ She had a nose ring the circumference of a five pence coin. He noticed there was something different about her.

“I cut myself a fringe last night,” she said as if they had always been friends. “Do you like it?” She sat down.

“It looks great,” he said, trying to be casual but feeling as though he might choke with excitement, first blueberries, now her.

“I didn’t realise there were any banks left to rob,” she patted the top of his balaclava and he involuntarily smiled. It was a mistake and he sunk with shame as soon as he’d done it.

“Are those your real teeth?” She mashed strawberries into her porridge and mixed it up.

“Unfortunately, yes,” he brought his hand up to his mouth.

“What are you? The devil or something?” She took a big bite of porridge. “Ahhh, strawberry,” she said with her mouth full.

Although she could be brutally honest, she seemed more curious than disgusted by him and he began to relax.

“No. Nothing so powerful. I was born like this. It’s my genes. I don’t have any sweat glands or melanoma or things like that. I’m usually awake during the night because exposure to sunlight could kill me. But I heard there were pancakes on the menu.”

“Huh,” she thought for a moment. “So you mean you don’t stink?”

He shook his head no.

“Then we are definitely going to be friends. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but most of these people smell so bad it makes my eyes water.”

“Brilliant,” he said and ate a few blueberries. “These are so good! How could I ever go back to mushrooms, weeds and cobnuts?”

“Is that what you’ve been eating?” Marianne asked.

“It sounds worse than it actually was. My father taught me to forage and spot uncontaminated rabbits. By the looks of things I was one of the lucky ones,” he said glancing around at the emaciated faces.

“I know. It’s painful to see,” she said.

“I keep wondering where he gets all the food? And those dorms. Jesus. I feel a bit like a bribed lab rat.” He took another blueberry from the plate. “But these blueberries are delicious, so what the hell?”

“The food is from the uncontaminated field and the greenhouses. We grow it,” she said.

“I still find that incredible. How long has it been going on?”

“Years now,” she said. “We kept it secret until the population was too weak to attack us or already dead,” she took a bite of porridge. “I never agreed with it,” she spoke in a whisper. “But now that Natural Selection has taken place, he’s promised to share the food with all of the survivors, hence the bus missions.”

“And that corrects it?” Ansley was indignant. “That just corrects the fact that you’ve kept food from starving people?”

“In the beginning there was really only enough for us,” she said.

“Lucky you,” he sneered.

“Please don’t. You have to understand, I’m not like them,” she looked in the direction of a Keeper and lowered her voice again, “I don’t believe in Jude, I don’t even like him. He just completely bewitched my father and there was nothing we could do. It’s totally destroyed my family,” she stared at her hands in her lap as she spoke.

Ansley had heard that Jude wielded an incredible power over people and many devoted themselves to his doctrine after just one encounter. His father called it brainwashing. Keep your mind clean and sharp, his father had said, because there is always some nutcase that will try to wash it for you. He wasn’t going to argue that the fear of contamination made people do completely irrational things, but hiding an uncontaminated food source was criminal. Lives could have been saved.

“I don’t really understand why we’re talking,” he said. “Your father must see me as one of the impure.”

“Yes,” her voice was conspiratorial, “but he doesn’t know anything.”

“And you do?”

“I don’t think of you as impure. Quite the opposite really,” she shimmered with her secret. “You and I were meant to meet,” her father walked through the door and she ducked down. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘meant to meet’?”

“Can you keep a secret?” Marianne asked.

“You’re risking us both by talking to me, so, blatantly, yes.”

“Good. I’ll come for you tonight,” she said and stood to leave. “Be ready,” she cupped her hand over his like a tortoise shell and walked away.

Marianne was a born clairvoyant and so was easy for the pearl to infiltrate. It simply planted its clamshell at the bottom of her mind and dreamed her into its watery world. These dreams were surprising. It’s always interesting what the mind conjures up inside of an abyss. Sure, there were plummets of blue, tentacles and corals, but often, there were dreams of soil and air and skies full of wings with green places to expand in growth. And the mollusc, like a tongue, hummed these dreams to the pearl and it matured inside this song, waiting for its release.

One day, the mollusc hummed Marianne swimming. She was a small girl then. Her laugh was like a faraway church bell reverberating through the water. The pearl knew it’d be safe with her, so it rose as a vision, a bubble from the deep that, every so often, popped in her imagination and lingered like a word that is searched for before it’s spoken.

The pearl was patient and hushed. It foresaw her father fishing in the cove and casting his net where the sun glittered on the water like a thousand pearls. And when that day finally came, the pearl was ready for him.

The morning her father found the pearl, he’d taken the boat out at dawn and, from the warmth of her bed, Marianne had listened to him leave. She pictured him out there, diminished against the iron sea that corroded the buildings, the houses, shops, museums and the old factory its waters had reclaimed and were digesting. The mists smelled metallic, the air was so thick with minerals that it sat in your mouth and coated your skin like extra cells.

The sea made her think of her Nan. Before the flood her Nan’s house had sat on the edge of the shore. It was a squat stone cottage with a black gate like a row of stitches that kept the sand at bay. Her Nan had called it a wart on a smooth sandy brow. Her Nan had taught herb lore to her mother and the two of them together smelled as glorious as a ploughed field.

Marianne pictured the cottage inside its new tidal home, covered in barnacles and sea urchins with little mouths that sucked through her Nan’s bric-a-brac, her blue medicinal bottles, Aga and fine bone china. She pictured jellyfish floating in and out of her rooms as delicate as doilies and her green wing-back chair, sand lodged and sodden.

They never found her Nan’s body, but then, most of the south of England had gone that way, quiet and stoic into the sea. There were a few who rose like bruised balloons, floated and rolled to the New Shore, but Marianne had only a vague memory of those days.

She was still very young when the men who had seen war patrolled the beach with binoculars and spades. She could remember clouds of incense and prayers as constant as wind.

But eventually time had licked them clean, just as her mother had said it would, and now the New Shore was a cesspool of reeds and treasure. The most remarkable things pitched up there, pots, kettle lids, knives, end tables, latches and frames to name a few. Marianne spent many afternoons rummaging through the reeds with her waders and mechanical arm.

It was where she learned to believe in magic, for the New Shore was rife with enchantment, and the day her father cast his fishing net over the pearl was no exception.

She had left the house a few hours after him with a belly full of porridge and a glass jar. The newts were plentiful. She loved to put them inside the jar and watch their thin membrane bellies breathing.

She squelched her way into the valley of the New Shore. She was completely alone apart from a few thin egrets that tiptoed across the bog. A yellow field of black-stemmed rapeseed blanketed the hill beside her, beyond which, the town of Hastings crouched like a brown calcified animal with fires burning all around it. When she entered the valley she could no longer see Hastings and the air grew muddier, thicker, as did the gnats. But thicker still was a privacy that had the glaze of a dream.

A cloud of insects hovered above a rectangular shape cloaked in seaweed. She walked closer. She pinched the seaweed with her mechanical arm and it slid off into two pieces revealing a black cage. A perfect parakeet perched inside it like a trapeze skeleton; truly, the skeleton looked embroidered in the air. The poking end of her mechanical arm just squeezed between the bars and when she touched the bird, it crumbled, turned to power, swirled past the bars of its cage and swarmed through the sky.

She followed it.

Her waders were heavy and the tide was coming in, so whenever she stopped to catch her breath she could feel the water compress the rubber against her legs. She struggled to keep going. The swarm hovered in front of a tall old wood-carved clock that was stuck inside a sand dune. She had walked past it a thousand times, but had never heard it strike, yet when she approached, the clock began to chime.

It’s face opened and the swarm entered through a hole in the dial. Moments later the door for a cuckoo opened, but instead of releasing a little bird, a thin silver ring dangled out on the mechanism spring. Marianne recognized it straight away.

It was her Nan’s nose ring. She took it from its perch, closed her eyes, winced and pushed it through her nostril. Blood and tears dripped into the seawater and swirled in a circular pattern that glowed. She put her finger in the middle of the circle and it dissolved. She knew that something was beginning, something beyond her visions, something tangible and real. She felt herself altering like a change in temperature. It was a phenomenon that she could not stop.

“What is happening?” She asked because she was accustomed to the world answering her questions.

And so it did.

In her mind she saw the sunken clamshell. It began to crack open and the light inside of it was as bright as a star.

The pearl’s cove was one of the only places that remained virtually untouched by the flooding. Of course the water levels rose, but the cove resembled its former self and no debris cluttered its waters. It was a beautiful place to fish. Marianne’s father trawled the pearl in on his first cast.

He came back for lunch and handed Marianne the clamshell. She was hanging her wet waders up in the laundry room, so dried her hands on her trouser legs and sceptically took it from him. It was the clamshell of her vision. She was not accustomed to gifts from her father, as they had never been close, and had grown even further apart since his role as a Keeper. But the pearl told him to give her its clamshell. It made its voice as loud as God’s.

“It’s alright,” he met her doubt. “It won’t bite.”

“Thank you,” she said and opened the clamshell slowly.

There it was: the perfect pearl, the exact one that she had dreamed. It wasn’t simply white, but pink, blue and cream all churning together like summer clouds. It immediately burned a vision behind her eyelids to express that it was real and her heart quickened with excitement.

“It’s a miracle,” she said, feeling breathless and light.

“Well,” her father said. “You can get a lot from a bit of dirt.”

“Daddy, it’s amazing, thank you,’ said Marianne.

Her mother placed bread and honey on the table.

“You’re welcome. But…wait a minute! Come here,” he took her chin and moved her face to the side. “What have you done to your nose?”

“Stuck a ring in it,” she shrugged her shoulders.

“Marianne, that’s a defilement of your senses,” he said.

Her mother laughed and nearly choked on her tea.

“Oh for goodness sake, Harold, my own mother had a nose ring just like that, remember? And have you forgotten that you once had hair long enough to plait?”

“Times have changed, Janet.”

“Times repeat, Harold, but they don’t change as much as people do. Now just stop it or I’ll be forced to use my photographic evidence against your saintly hood,” she said.

“You know we’re not allowed pre-initiation photographs, Janet,” her father was angry.

“I’m not saying that I have them here, just that I know where they are in the old house. I’m sure nobody has raided your ugly mug,” her mother said.

“So you’d actually walk back to our old house just to…”

“Look, Harold, it was a joke. I’m not walking anywhere. Just forget I even said it,” her mother interrupted and rubbed her temples.

He grunted and went to the door. The lame material of his shiny tracksuit swished against his legs. He put on his hat and left without saying goodbye. There was a Keepers’ meeting every Saturday afternoon.

“Off to meet the henchmen again,” said Marianne.

She often teased that they secretly wore antlers on their heads and chanted psalms backwards. She was trying to cheer her mother up.

Her mother once laughed about the Keepers as well but, lately, she had become serious.

“It’s important for people to have a purpose, you know. It keeps them ticking,” she said and put her hand on Marianne’s shoulder.

“Yeah right. But I reckon bee-keeping would be more effective than fanaticism,” she said and took a bite of bread.

“I don’t like you talking like that, Marianne. Jude’s considered a minor God to this village, or what’s left of it, and if anyone hears you, well, you’d be guilty of treason,” her mother said as she crushed some seeds with her pestle.

“Treason! That’s a bit harsh don’t you think? You make it sound like a royal court or something. Off with her head!” She used her hand like an axe and chopped off her own head.

“Seriously, Marianne, don’t fool around, it’s beginning to feel like a dictatorship and it scares me, but I don’t know what else to do. Where else would we find food? We can’t risk leaving. We just have to bide our time and be careful with what we say.”

“I know. I only say this stuff to you.”

“Of course you do. Sorry, honey, I’m just sensitive at the moment. It drives me crazy too,” she said mixing a tonic on the countertop. “Forgive me,” she said placing the blue vial in her jacket pocket, superstitious or not, everyone still wanted her mother’s homoeopathic cures for their ailments.

She kissed Marianne’s forehead and walked out the door. The house was silent. Marianne looked at the clamshell resting on the table. She opened it and saw the swirling again. She got up and walked out into the garden.

Their garden was an herbal pharmacy. Whenever her mother had found an uncontaminated plant she carefully dug it up and replanted it there. Her father called it a witch’s meadow, but her mother always reminded him that she was from a long line of herbalists and he knew what he was getting himself into when he married her.

Marianne walked into the potting shed and opened the clamshell again. It was like opening a magic trunk lit from the inside. She touched the pearl with her finger and the very air around it wrinkled, as though it were made of silky invisible water.

What was she meant to do with it?

It reminded her of the fisheye she once plucked out of a mackerel. It had been equally mesmerizing and iridescent. The eye had been stuck inside the fish’s head like the pearl was stuck inside the clam’s tongue. Mackerel are only beautiful inside their own world, for the vibrancy of their scales begins to diminish as soon as they leave the water.

Marianne loved this type of commitment because, strange as it sounds, it made her think of her future. She had felt compelled to keep the fisheye, so carefully dissected it with her penknife and let its jelly drop in her hand. She replaced the eye with a small sequin of sea polished pottery that she had in her pocket. It perfectly fitted the fish’s empty socket and she bid it safe passage.

Her visions were beginning to strengthen and she buried the fisheye in her mother’s pharmacy because it had told her that it wanted to live underground. Bamboo grew in its place. Marianne sat next to it and let it whisper over her when she had a problem to solve.

Her mother understood the effervescence of nature. How sometimes when holding a rock, a feather or a bone, its touch could hit your body’s water and send a fizz up your spine and through your hair. They shared the awareness that we are each different moulds of the same elements and how we transform depends so much on the voices we acknowledge.

Marianne listened to nature.

Her mother understood the fisheye. Her father did not. He regarded nature as a thing to be tamed or eaten. He thought singing rocks were absurd. She sat beneath the bamboo with the pearl in her hands, listening; she took some twine from the potting shed and threaded it through a small leather pouch. She dropped the pearl inside the pouch and fastened it around her neck.

It lived in the pouch for months and steadily grew in her mind. Strength takes time, like trust. She began to rely on the pearl more and more, spoke to it and held it in her confidence, so when tragedy struck, it was there for her.

Her best friend, Joan and her family went fishing and were lost in a storm at sea. Joan was the only friend Marianne had at the castle. Joan’s father had also been a Keeper and they shared a distrust of Jude.

Marianne camped near the New Shore after hearing the news, pitched a tent in a dry yellow field. So many people were dying by the hands of weather or disease. Small poppies burst through the summer ground like blood blisters. She waited and searched for a clue, for a piece of Joan’s boat, anything, but the sea had swallowed them whole.

In the evenings she built her own fire. It seemed the only thing alive. The waves crashed and whistled around the lost objects. The waves crashed and whistled around her. The pearl dug deep inside her then, it’s light held her bones together as it weaved her back into feeling, muscle by sinew, with the thread of the story it revealed her future. She’d survive and not by submitting to fear. She saw herself standing on a hilltop; her face slowly morphing through skyscapes and ages, yet her eyes remained alert and forward watching.

Marianne could not widen her vision and witness more of her future self, but she was aware that the mind grows its focus and could feel herself expanding with power. The pearl told her that she was worthy of this power and it’s the stories we’re told about ourselves that matter, that keep us going or stop us dead.

10.

Ansley picked up the paper that had been slipped under his door during breakfast. A sheet of paper, real paper and the back of it was completely blank. He wondered how he could get his hands on everyone else’s sheets as well. How did Jude manage to find these things? He must have stockpiles somewhere. He thought of the cherubs. Perhaps they flew around gathering like little minion hoarders. It was a note from Jude:

“Greetings from Project Nigh,

I hope you slept well and enjoyed your breakfast. The food you ate was grown here in our own field and is completely safe. The field is equipped with a polytunnel, heated greenhouse and a harvesting room. I will explain the logistics of your lodging now and answer any remaining questions tonight at dinner.

Here at the castle we like to get straight to the point.

Each of you is expected to work for three hours a day helping with the management of the grounds and allotment. Consider yourselves a lucky stakeholder in the new world. What you are harvesting is your future. You must clock in and out of work. Food is only to be consumed during mealtimes. Breakfast is at 7:00am, lunch is at 1:00pm and dinner is at 8:00pm. Times are exact and food is rationed amongst the Keepers and yourselves, so taking from the harvesting room or the field is considered theft. There are two laundry rooms at the end of each hallway for your use. Each dormitory has been fitted with a barrel of rainwater. It passes through a filtration system and into your bathroom, use your water sparingly and it should last you until the end of the month, when the barrels are refilled. Drinking water must be obtained from the kitchen. Feel free to come and go as you please, but don’t leave the village, as there may still be impure members of the species lurking about and cross contamination is punishable by death. No exceptions. Attached is a sermon timetable, and yes, sermons are mandatory.

Love and peace,

The Prophet Jude.”

‘Cross contamination punishable by death’ seemed a bit extreme, thought Ansley, but then, they were living in extreme times. He hadn’t left the woodland at all during the Period of Disease. The Disease was a form of BSE that had been incorporated within the cytoplasm of a bacterium, making the prion infinitely more contagious as it could be transmitted from host to host and mutated violently once digested.

Ansley and his father had always grown, hunted or foraged for their food. They were intentionally isolated and their house was only accessible down a long wooden track. When they heard the new outbreak was considered a plague, his father felled loads of trees and let them fall haphazardly along the track, cutting them off entirely. His father was a survivalist, as well as a purist, who believed that food preservatives were a gateway to cancer. This belief kept them alive.

In the woodland they had buried an “emergency endurance kit” containing a cooking pot, rope, flint, stone and cotton wool, a blanket, tins of food, a tarpaulin and a penknife. They remained uninfected and had decided to wait out the plague.

You noticed the eyes of the diseased first; they looked sore, red and blinked continuously, then came the tongue blisters, the memory loss and muscle ticks. Worst of all victims spread the disease by airborne transmission so loved ones deserted the sick as they twitched involuntarily into the grave. People died alone.

Ansley had been collecting mushrooms on the night his house was bombed. Air raids were common in areas of high contamination in the early days as a desperate attempt to isolate and contain the sick. But they hadn’t heard a plane in ages as the military’s stockpiled resources were raided and the personnel disappeared. Probably just some renegade nutcase pilot, thought Ansley, before he realized something was wrong because the woodland had become completely silent. Then came the shrill mechanical noise and the impact of the bomb like the tremor of a beast underfoot. The rest he tried to block out.

He dug up their endurance kit and built a camp inside wild holly that was growing over a fallen tree like a curtain. It was on high ground, with a sentinel’s view over a difficult terrain to navigate with contaminated legs. He saw nobody. Three months, his father had said, another three months and the worst would be over. He notched out the days on a trunk of wood. All though the summer he waited. His father was right; after around three months, a silence descended the atmosphere, soft as snow, yet thick enough to suffocate, and he wondered if he were the last person on earth.

He ventured out and felt equal measures of relief and trepidation when he saw the lights of candles and fires built by other survivors. How could he approach them? With his appearance how would they believe that he wasn’t infected? They wouldn’t risk not killing him straight away. He had no choice but to keep his distance.

He was lucky that his father had taught him how to detect uncontaminated plants and exist in nature. His grief was shortened by his need for pragmatism, but nothing dulled his loneliness. His evenings alone showed him that he had been hardened in ways that he cared not to admit.

It was strange to be near people again. He’d forgotten the sound of his voice and the feeling of companionship. What did Marianne mean when she said they were meant to meet? She was coming for him tonight and the thought of this cracked through him like a great thaw. The sun was nothing but a red line of horizon like a string of ribbon along a dark package.

Soon, he thought, she’ll be here soon.

11.

He was sitting at his desk writing when the rock hit his window. The electric desk lamp was dim, but a luxury. He clicked shut the brass clasp of his notebook, his most precious possession, as his father had given it to him for his poems. It was black snakeskin with lined paper and wide margins for his drawings. His father had traded an uncontaminated pumpkin for it, which was an incredibly expensive trade as it was a vegetable that retained its seeds.

But he wasn’t thinking of that now. He was thinking only of Marianne. He looked out the window and saw Marianne standing on the grass like a phosphorescent mushroom. She smiled and motioned for him to come down.

He grabbed his coat and tiptoed through the door and down the hallway.

“So what’s our secret mission?” He asked as he approached her.

She looked serious. She took his hand. “There is a cove I need to explore and I wanted someone to come with me. It’s where this is from,” she unfastened the pearl from her neck, opened the leather pouch and dropped it on her palm.

It glowed like a sorcerer’s orb in the night.

“Is that a pearl?” He bent down to inspect it.

“It’s not just any pearl, it’s a magic pearl. No. Magic is not the right word. I don’t know how to properly explain what it does, you see, I get these visions and I know that it’s this pearl directing me somehow, it’s like a source. That’s it. The pearl is a source,” her face glowed over the pearl’s light, as though it wasn’t attached to her body and she appeared to float.

“A source of what?”

“I’m not entirely sure, but it’s greater than I am and makes me feel whole. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes. My poems give me that feeling,” he said, embarrassed to be admitting how he felt about his poetry.

“I knew you wouldn’t think I was crazy. It’s like having another level of instinct, right? I said we were meant to meet because the pearl told me you were important,” she said.

“How does it tell you?” It seemed remarkable that they were having such a forthright conversation and he sensed that there would never be small talk between them.

“It drops a picture inside me that strangles out any other thought or sense. On the bus that picture was you, right now, it’s the cliff-face beyond the cove,” she said.

“Is that where we’re going?” He asked.

“Yes. I have to tell you that it might be dangerous,” she said and cocked her head to look at him.

He was strange, but that was just it, he was otherworldly, hence off the human radar and she felt, for this reason, that she could certainly tell him things. Specifically, the things that made her different, like her visions, like the pearl.

When she thought this, the pearl rose like a full moon behind her eyelids. She saw a hole, as a dark eye opening inside a wall of white chalk. Again, the pearl guillotined the image of the cliff through her brain.

“Then I’ve been warned,” he said.

The danger didn’t matter. They lived in a world of danger, and anyway, he had the feeling that she knew he’d do anything she asked.

They set off walking. The moon was directly above them and full. They talked until it was too windy for words and silence encased them comfortably. Every so often he turned and watched her face. It was chiselled with determination. He could tell that she was the type of person that fixated on things and when she made her mind up there was no stopping her. He was right.

“It’s about a mile from here,” she turned and said. They were heading towards Hastings. “Let’s stop here for a bit, then walk along the cliff so we don’t miss the cove.”

She walked to a wind bent tree and sat down on the grass beneath it. It was tufted and encrusted with sand. “I just need a little rest,” she said and began pulling the hair at her scalp as though she were trying to rip the idea out of her head.

“Are you okay?”

“Honestly, I’m fine. The image is just so heavy in my head that it makes me feel a little nauseous. I think I just need to eat,” she took two peanut butter sandwiches from her satchel and handed one to him.

“Peanut butter?” It had been ages since he’d had peanut butter.

“I know, amazing isn’t it? I found it in the castle kitchen cupboard and helped myself,” she said.

“Isn’t that theft? According to the letter….” He teased and she rolled her eyes.

He told her about how he and his father used to eat peanut butter sandwiches when they’d go night fishing. They had a little dinghy named ‘The Worn Slipper’ because when it was moored in the harbour it looked like a slipper in a giant’s bathtub. The boat was thin enough to feel the power of the tide move beneath them, so they never strayed far from the land. The water then was midnight blue and if squelling were a word, it would describe the night sea impeccably, for it both swelled and squelched against their tiny vessel. He liked to put his hand in the water. Sometimes he would get a fright, pull his hand out quickly and cast his line in the direction of his fear, thinking it must be a fish.

His father had taken him out in the Slipper the night his mother left. He was eight years old and remembered the wind was ferocious against their faces. “The world is against us,” his father had said and tacked the sail in the opposite direction, making the wind push against their backs. “Now the world is behind us and that’s how fast it happens.” Ansley had felt a great meaning pass between them that was both familiar and mysterious like a melody whose words he had yet to learn. He told Marianne about it.

“I know that feeling,” said Marianne. “It’s the feeling of prediction. That’s what this pearl is for me.”

They rose and walked the last mile along the edge. “Your arrival also feels like a prediction,” she said after a while. “Is it true what they say about you?”

“I don’t know. What do they say?” The wind stung his face.

“They call you Dark Ansley and say that your genes are contaminated,” she said softly and gazed towards Hastings, its blue flames were rimmed with a brown night.

“I guess it’s true. My genes aren’t pure, at least not pure as you know it, but that doesn’t make me less human.” He was breathing so hard that his balaclava was moist. “I’m not contaminated and you don’t need to fear me.”

“Fear you?” She said with surprise. “I don’t fear you. See that glow? You probably already know that’s Hastings Blaze. I haven’t been close enough to it to feel its heat, but I recognize its burn. It’s heartless. Jude has that same burn. You do not. If anyone’s impure or to be feared it’s him, not you.”

The wind lifted and twirled her hair like black streamers, it covered then exposed her face and she looked as though she were underwater. Moon water, he thought and turned to face the sea. The air caught his breath, it was salty and fierce and if he had been able to find the adequate words for a reply, the wind would have shoved them, along with his courage down his throat. So he didn’t speak, but the silence filled anyway with meaning and gratitude.

This was their destination. It was difficult to determine where the sky ended and the water began, as both were turbulent and made dark backdrops to the moon’s radiance. The cliffs were white, below which, he could hear the waves cracking against the rocks like a whip.

Marianne pointed to the cove and began to undress. She took everything off except her bra and underpants. She stood looking at him impatiently, her hair sticking out like some Medusa. He bent down and took off his shoes. His head was spinning with worry. How could he expose his body to her? It was scarred and deformed.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” he said. There was bile in his mouth.

“I promise I won’t look,” she said.

He believed her, but felt a paralysis pour through his body like cement and stood unmoving.

“Okay. I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking. Of course you don’t have to undress. Just wait here for me,” she said and disappeared over the side.

“Marianne!” He ran to the edge and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her hands clutching tufts of sea grass as she scaled down the cliff.

“Don’t worry, I’ve done this before,” she grinned up at him.

He quickly stripped down to his boxers. His body would be hidden inside the water, he thought and at any rate he could hardly let her go on her own. There was brave and there was reckless and she definitely looked the latter. The cliff was cold and moist with chalk like wet sandpaper. He tried his best to scale down it gracefully, but scraped and dropped until he reached the bottom of the rocks. The wind was no longer a freight train and their eardrums went warm with relief.

They walked along the base of the chalk cliff and Marianne ran her hand across its surface. He could feel her thinking and followed her silently. She looked at her hand. Her white palm glowed. They were on the side of the cove that was lit by the moon. The other half was in shadow. She took both hands, rubbed them against the chalk and then all over her face.

She could tell from his expression that her face had turned white. She broke a piece off the wall, licked it and smeared it over her skin like war paint. Then walked to the edge of the sea and screamed. And like a game, the sea threw back her scream, she laughed and screamed again.

“There!” She pointed towards a stack of chalk about fifty metres from the shore. “That’s it! That’s where we need to go!”

12.

The stack looked as though it were made of marble. Although it had once been a part of the cove, it had detached from the rest of the cliff years ago and stood alone like a skeletal finger poking out of the sea. The waves moved up and down it with great speed.

Marianne looked as though she, too, were made of marble and glistened. She was speaking rapidly, but Ansley couldn’t understand what she was saying as the sea dwarfed her, drowned her sound.

For a moment, he felt scared and looked behind him, and when he turned back around he saw that Marianne was gone. His heart jumped. He searched the waves and found her bobbing up and down as natural as a seagull, waiting for him.

Come on, she beckoned.

He could see her white rock face and her teeth flashing like barnacles, of course he dived in. The water was cold and it took his breath away. He gave his body to it reluctantly. The tide was coming in quickly now and swimming was difficult. More than once the water went over his head, but he kept going, kept following Marianne and eventually they made it to the stack.

It towered above them. She kept as close to the stack as she could and he mimicked her movements. They swam around it and she pointed up to what looked like a small cave. She swam to the bottom of the rock, found a finger hold, lifted herself up and began to scale the wall.

Ansley looked up the wall, like scanning a skyscraper, and saw that there were natural battered footholds. Thank God, he thought. He kept his stomach pressed firmly against the rock, it was cold, wet and gritty and he could feel it tearing the goose pimples on his skin.

Where the hell was she taking us? Little white rocks fell on his head every time she moved and his eyes were watering from chalk dust. He had to keep blinking in order to see and the blurriness gave him a sickening sense of vertigo. He didn’t need to look down. He could feel the water swirling beneath him. It shook the rock and the stack shifted, almost growled, with its power. He felt it rising as though it were coming after him and wanted to suck him down.

Marianne’s body finally popped over a jut in the cliff and disappeared. He knew she had reached the top. Seconds later he pulled himself up beside her, gasping and clearing his eyes of powder. They stood at the entrance to a small cave. She grabbed his hand and yanked him inside.

“Just look at it Ansley – have you ever seen anything so incredible?” She turned around in a circle and then stopped when she saw him.

He had never exposed so much of his skin before. Only his parents had seen him undressed.

“It’s brilliant,” he said. “How did you…what?” He could feel her looking at him.

“I’m sorry, I just…” she turned away embarrassed.

“Is it my skin?” he felt very self-conscious and ridiculous.

“No! Yes, but not how you mean it. I mean it’s, well it’s like this cave. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before,” she said, keeping her head turned away. “Ansley, do you mind if I look?”

How could he say no? They were standing half naked in a cave together. It was already excruciatingly uncomfortable, but excruciating in a way that felt soothing as well, like scraping off dead skin. Her voice was so delicate and measured; he could tell that it was a difficult situation for her as well.

“Okay,” he said, “but be quick.” Like a gunshot, he thought, your eyes straight through me.

She turned around and circled him staring intensely. He stood completely still. The scars on his body were frayed at the edges like veins in marble. She could see his arteries as well as his ribs. He’s nymph-like, she thought and touched his arm. Her fingers were wet and cold but her palm was warm.

“You’re really beautiful,” she said.

They looked at one another and before he knew what was happening he kissed her, lightly on the lips.

13.

She returned his kiss and then backed away. He kept fluctuating between nymph and monster like a hologram. She couldn’t control her sudden revulsion.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry,” she shook her head and tried to dislodge the image.

“It’s okay,” he wanted to change the subject. “It’s too quick. I lost control for a minute,” loss of control or not, she’d kissed him back which was more than he felt he had a right to hope for.

They stood avoiding one another for an awkward moment. It felt like hours, years.

“So tell me what we’re looking for,” he said to change the subject.

“That’s the strangest part; I’m not exactly sure what we’ll find. I’ll know it when I see it, if that makes any sense,” she said, grateful to speak about something else.

“It makes perfect sense,” he said. Like everything about you, he thought. “Did you even know this cove was here?”

“I’ve seen it from my dad’s boat, but I thought it was just a seabird perch or something, until the vision arrived, like an obsession, like I didn’t own my body. I just had to come here, I had to, and as soon as I saw the stack I knew this cave was where I needed to be.”

“Why here?”

“I’m not sure Ansley, but it feels right.”

“Good enough for me. Let’s look around.”

He had to admit it was stunning. It was like being inside the fold of a doves white wing. It was conical and narrow. At the top, about twelve metres above them, was a small hole that the moon shone through, illuminating layer after layer of damp chalk, sculpted like wet feathers. On the side of the wall, six metres up, was another hole that was rippled like a knot in a tree trunk. Sea wind blew through them both.

“It’s like a giant blowing into a conch shell,” Marianne said.

He ran his hand along the chalk. “I thought chalk was too soft for caves?”

“They’re rare and shallow. This one won’t be here in ten years, maybe even less than that, so we’re lucky. Listen,” she cleared her throat. “Thank you for coming with me Ansley. It would’ve been really dangerous and stupid to come by myself and to be honest, I wanted you here. You see, you remind me of my pearl, the colour of you, I mean.”

“Well you couldn’t really ask anyone else now could you?” he tried to make his voice sound light.

“Yeah. But something is happening Ansley, I can feel it, something big and bold and wonderful.”

“Yeah I can feel it too.” That something is you, he thought.

“What’s that?” She said walking towards a wall sculpted in white undulating waves.

“What’s what?” Ansley asked.

“There, wedged into the wall. That’s what I’m looking for,” she walked up and tried to grab what looked like a crystal fingernail.

“What is it?” He joined her.

“Whatever it is, it’s stuck, but touch it with your finger. See? It gives you a mini electric shock!”

“You’re right!” Ansley placed his finger on it and jumped backwards. “What is this thing?”

It was as though a knife was submerged inside the wall with only a few centimetres of its blade sticking out. He scraped around the chalk and bits of the wall fell off and powdered inside his hands. Underneath the chalk was a grey stone.

“Let me try and pull it out. Hang on,” he tugged and tugged but it wouldn’t budge.

“Here use this rock,” Marianne said, handing him a chunk of chalk

“Step back,” he bashed the wall, both the rock and the wall crumpled, but he was able to wiggle the object free. It tingled inside his thumb and forefinger as he handed it to Marianne.

She rubbed it clean and turned it around in her hand.

“It looks like a black beetle’s shell, you know, an exoskeleton, but harder,” he said. “Does it hurt to hold it?”

“No, but it feels strange. Like a zinging vibration,” she said and placed it in the middle of her palm.

They were both looking at it when it completely dissolved into her hand.

“Oh, my God! Did you see that?”

“Yes! It just melted into you!”

They stood agape looking at her palm and didn’t see the water running in until it had already reached their feet.

“Ansley look!” She shouted and pointed down to where their feet were standing in puddles.

The tide was visibly rising over the edge of the cave opening and within seconds the dark water started rushing towards them with force.

Ansley looked up and saw that there were footholds in the walls.

“This way!” He shouted and began climbing towards an opening in the side.

Large chunks of the chalk crumbled under his touch and he fell back against the knee high water. A crack widened and split up the wall. A huge sheet of chalk broke away, crashed into the water and exposed a grey and orange trunk of stone. Ansley rubbed his hand against it. The bark was grainy from the sand, but solid and smooth otherwise.

“It’s petrified,” he whispered.

Marianne touched the bark and another sheet of chalk dislodged, collapsed into the rising water and uncovered half of the tree. Its mammoth grey branches were veined with swirls of copper orange. The water was waist high now and the tree felt like the gift.

“A petrified tree,” said Marianne. “How amazing! Like a ladder, come on, it’s obvious we are meant to climb it,” she said and scurried up the wall.

Ansley followed. Climbing the branches was easy. The bark was smooth, but ridged enough for finger and footholds. The water rose precariously beneath them and Ansley felt the branches dislodge with his body weight. He was aware that cracks were splitting now in all directions.

“Take it slow,” he called up to Marianne, but it was too late.

A massive crack lightened across the ceiling and the top of the cave seemed to suddenly split open.

“Hang on!” Ansley shouted, but Marianne lost her balance and fell backwards into the water.

The chalk crashed and the water levels rose. Ansley took a deep breath and dived into the water. The water was clouded with chalk and Ansley began to panic. Finally he saw rising bubbles and followed them to Marianne’s mouth. Ansley put his hand on her arm and pointed towards a hole in the side of the wall. It was the only way out. The entire tree was now exposed and its branches would take them to the top. He thought his lungs would burst. She didn’t move. She seemed to be in shock. She began to sink. He flipped around, plunged towards her, grabbed her hand and pulled her up to the surface. He pushed her towards the tree and she found her footing on one of the stone branches.

“Hurry,” he said as she began to climb.

He heaved his body out of the water and steadily followed her towards the hole. The sea licked the bottom of his heels and he concentrated on keeping his tongue away from his sharp chattering teeth. Nearly there, he repeated as he fixated on the hole, round and black as an unlit planet.

“When we go through it, move to the side so the water can pour out,” Marianne called down to him and he felt relieved that she’d regained her wits.

As they got closer to the hole he could see moonlight coming through it until finally Marianne was crawling through its tunnel of dim light.

“There is nothing to hang onto! We’ll have to jump!” She shouted and disappeared.

Ansley reached the opening, pushed his body through it and dived into the sea. Behind him, water poured powerfully out of the hole and pieces of the stack began to split and smash into the sea. They swam and swam until the sea felt calm. Their heads broke the water’s surface and they sucked in air. The sea was gently rising and lifted them as they filled their lungs with oxygen. The world was soft now. They were close to the shore where the waves licked the surface like a kitten’s tongue. Without speaking a word they turned around and looked at the stack. The petrified tree was sprawling and colossal. The copper threads in its grey stone shined weakly in the moonlight, but the tree felt enchanted, yet dead, as though they’d unearthed a charmed catacomb.

“You saved my life,” Marianne broke the silence.

He could see their clothes in the distance. Her eyes had changed. She looked capable of anything.

“It was nothing,” he smiled. “An everyday occurrence.”

The sky was beginning to lighten in the east as though that part of the world had seen an explosion. The birds were waking up. They bobbed like buoys.

She raised her dripping hand. They both gazed at it.

“That was bizarre,” he said.

“Yeah,” she whispered. The moon blinked against the water and she put her hand out to touch it.

“Maybe it was going to dissolve anyway, you know, maybe it was made out of, oh I don’t know, something soluble,” he said and felt ridiculous.

She was completely serious.

“No. I feel it in me. I feel it.” She looked him straight in the eye. They were both shivering.

“Let’s go,” he said and they started to swim to the shore.

He didn’t look at her while she dressed. She was in a distant mood, but that was no surprise as they’d nearly drowned. He didn’t know what to say. The atmosphere was palpable and words felt inadequate. He couldn’t believe he’d only known her a day.

“Maybe it means you’re mad,” he said, wanting to hear her laugh but she didn’t, she was still for an uncomfortably long time.

“Yes,” she said finally. “Or maybe it means I’m chosen.”

Which was exactly why the pearl had given her this vision, for it knew that once the tree of Genesis was disturbed, the initiation would begin.

14.

On the walk home she kept her hand wrapped around her locket. Fog had fallen, the land was undefined and they seemed to walk above it suspended. The castle poked through a grey cloud in the distance and Ansley felt like he was dreaming. Marianne stopped him.

“Look at the pearl,” she said and opened the leather pouch.

It glowed brighter than a searchlight. The haze around it was metallic and they felt, once more, the rapture of the sea.

“That’s not natural,” he said.

“No, but then, nor are you, nor am I. Look, I don’t know how you’re connected to this but I’m certain that you are. Promise me you won’t tell anybody about what happened tonight?” Marianne said.

“I promise,” he said.

They paused together standing just beyond the village. Ansley turned around and looked behind them. In the fog the fires of Hastings were softened to an evocative blue mist that pulsed like the approach of something holy. He touched her shoulder.

“We should go,” he said softly.

“I’m not ready to go back yet,” she said.

The fog surrounded her voice as though she were speaking underneath a blanket. Whatever they said now would remain hidden and between them.

“Then let’s sit,” said Ansley.

They sat knees touching knees like the tellers of secrets cloaked in fog. It felt like a chance to safely expose. His face was suffused and peaceful. A barn owl interrupted their stillness and he spoke.

“Have you ever been owl spotting?”

“No. But I’m guessing you have,” she said.

He smiled his close-mouth smile, put his hand to his lips and mimicked the owl’s call exactly. Marianne held her breath. Seconds later the owl called back.

“He’s moving closer,” Ansley whispered and called the owl again.

The owl returned the call immediately and a dark shape broke the fog and swooped over their heads.

“My father used to say they were like spirits when we went owl spotting. I remember one time we came across a valley full of campfires,” he said.

“Was that during the London exodus?” Marianne cut in.

“Yeah, I must have been really young because it was at the beginning of The Transformation Age, but before contamination. Anyway we stood at the top of the hill and watched the fires below glowing like a field of red tulips against the blackness of the night,” he said.

“You’re such a poet,” she said half teasing, half impressed and he shrugged his shoulders as though he couldn’t possibly be anything else.

“My father said that we were all refugees now, every one of us, and I remember feeling this naive perception of happiness because I knew what it was like to live as a refugee in a physical, communal sense. An owl swooped over us, as intimately low as it did just now, then lifted and soared over the fires. He’ll be all right, my father said; it’s the rest of us that are stuck between waves. The next day two hurricanes wiped out Los Angeles.”

“Maybe your father had the gift of premonition,” Marianne said.

“Maybe the world sends us warnings we don’t comprehend because of the way we’ve built our vision to accommodate our sense of supremacy,” he said.

“That’s quite a sentence. I can tell you’ve thought about this,” she said.

“Too much time alone in the woods I guess. But then, there’s you. And you foresee things,” he said.

“Yes. But I don’t believe I’m standing at the top of the mountain, so I look up and not down, which makes a massive difference,” she said.

Ansley hummed in agreement, then sat silently thinking.

“I remember a feeling of camaraderie as well. There is always a sense of togetherness at the edge of change. We used to watch satellite pictures of the earthquakes and actually celebrate the leaking oil. It felt as though the worst had happened and although it was tragic…”

“Often change is only precipitated by tragedy,” Ansley cut in, quoting the Prime Minister.

“Exactly. There was relief, like humanity had released itself from a sickening dependence and could move forward. Like oil was a drug or something. My friend Joan and I would make plans about how we would become Green Girls, a modern version of Land Girls, and singlehandedly revive the alternative energy industry. We had no idea what was in store. So The Transformation Age was loss, but also hope, because it felt like a crossroads and at no point did we actually believe that our entire civilization could collapse,” she said.

“Prosperity as a coat of armour,” said Ansley.

“More like arrogance as a coat of armour. And then the hurricanes,” she said.

“And then the hurricanes,” he echoed. “And desperation kicked in like a monster at the door.”

“Remember that news clip of the mussels and fish living in a sofa?”

“I remember the floating baby bottle,” said Ansley.

“Yeah,” Marianne looked towards the sea. “That was terrible.”

After the first hurricane, the residents were instant neighbours. They built water blockades and fortresses and shared clothes. There was a palpable sense of respite. Yes, thousands were dead and the city was devastated, but the majority of people were still standing. You could see them coming out of the rubble like bewildered insects wondering if the rain had stopped. They looked up at the sky blinking. There was sun. There were seagulls. Normal things, so hope ensued.

They interviewed a woman holding a small child.

“We made it,” she said, “I was terrified, but I stayed and came through it. It just goes to show that humans are capable of anything.”

A few hours later a second hurricane hit. Nobody had anticipated another disaster. The first hurricane had wiped out all of the detection equipment. The systems had failed and this time, there were no survivors, not a single one, even low flying media helicopters were taken.

“Check out those clouds.” A cameraman said to his pilot. “They seem to be rumbling or growing or something.”

He didn’t realize the clouds he spoke of weren’t clouds at all, but mounting water. It must have been as if the sky had dropped on them. All the footage is from dislodged cameras. There were no faces, just sounds, first screaming then gurgling waves and the sounds of running water with the occasional appliance floating by or a high heeled shoe. The city was pulped and underwater. Ansley kept thinking of a concrete and steel reef. He saw fish swimming in and out of windows and barnacles attaching themselves in patterns on the pavement.

The H from the Hollywood sign was found in a field in Nevada. They auctioned it at Christie’s and for weeks there was hype about how many millions it was likely to fetch, but in the end nobody wanted it because nobody wanted a reminder of how infinitesimal humans were against nature. So the age transformed us from collecting relics and artefacts for huge amounts to valuing survival at all costs.

New York was soon deserted.

The following year the beauty and pharmaceutical industries began to collapse. Without oil you couldn’t produce petroleum-based products. Some people rejoiced and heralded this as the return of plant-based healing. Others battled and things got particularly nasty. The pharmaceutical companies had the obvious monopoly and charged extortionate rates for their remaining cancer, HIV and diabetes drugs so only the extremely wealthy were able to prolong their lives, while the others died at rapid rates.

Substitutes were possible and might have been found, but the people were warring and suspicious of one another, so progress was slow and corrupted by greed and desperation. People were commonly killed over eye shadow disputes. ‘Maybelline Murders’ the press called them.

“Thank goodness the fine people of Los Angeles didn’t have to see this day,” one woman from Phoenix said about the beauty meltdown. Botox and dialysis were offered on the black market. Bodies were found bloated and pinpricked in alleyways. HIV, hepatitis, TB, syphilis, polio, tetanus, measles, malaria and influenza sufferers took to the streets like a parade of skeletons.

They were protesting the hospital’s decision to admit only treatable, curable patients. All others were told to die peacefully at home. They were simply overrun with beauty, disease, self-inflicted wounds or incidents. The stockpiles of antibiotics were dwindling and the super bugs had mutated to such an extent that it rendered the drugs useless anyway.

The food industry was also in a state of collapse. Without oil there was no way to grow, process or distribute mass quantities of food products. How would you operate a tractor? A semi-truck? A freezer? People had to go back to planting and harvesting crops by hand. Locality determined what you could grow and eat. What about those that lived in a desert? What about those that lived in a place where the ground was frozen half of the year? Airplanes, trains, cars were all out of the question so there simply was no way to transport food. Without food and without medicine half the world’s population died during the first year and the majority of the rest were weakened by a state of shock.

Huge groups of people left London and the major cities, they walked in packs down abandoned motorways and old Roman roads searching for land to settle and grow food upon. It was a return to the Dark Ages, but with waterproof camping gear.

However, it was true that despite all apocalyptic expectations there remained in Britain an amazing sense of freedom that prevailed as the people were forced to leave ownership behind. They carried what they could on their backs. The ‘what if’ was over and the survivors tried to enter the future with a pioneering hope.

This is when they believed they could grow their own food, when food was still relatively plentiful in the western world and could be found, albeit scarcely, in street markets.

Time and again you’d hear people saying things like, “I’ve always wanted to live off the land,” or “I feel this is a chance for society to reprioritize.” They knew little. The days of disaster were merciful when compared to the onslaught of contamination that lay ahead.

The fog began to lift as an early symptom of sunrise. Marianne and Ansley had talked about so much, the state of the world, but also, more importantly, their dreams and how they were still intact. Perhaps the only part of their psyche that remained intact and that this ability was the human spirits greatest example of fortitude. It’s why and how they would survive.

The village unveiled itself and all the houses were swathed in sleepy darkness, apart from Jude’s, whose windows burned from the top of the hill.

“No rest for the wicked,” Ansley said as they both looked up at the house.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Marianne stood and rearranged the atmosphere.

Back to reality, thought Ansley, but he stood as well and met her eye to eye. “Is that a general comment or are you referring to something specific?”

“I’m referring to him,” she nodded towards Jude’s house. “I always thought it was strange how a world that is wise with its checks and balances could choose him to forewarn us of contamination.”

“It does seem odd, but maybe he’s a balance of something else,” said Ansley.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that even virtue needs something to measure itself against. It’s how things move forward,” he said and she took his hands in hers.

The pearl was a burning lump in her throat.

“It’s nearly dawn. You need to go,” she said. Her voice was a whisper and he stared at her lips.

“What about you?” He squeezed her hands, unwilling to let go.

“I have something else I need to do. On my own. I’ve put it off to for too long now,” and the way she spoke made him feel as though she didn’t want him to ask any more questions.

He nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “For tonight and, well, everything.”

She moved her face so close to his that he could feel the breath leaving her small and perfect nose. She hovered there for a while and then gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“No,” she said. “Thank you,” then she turned and ran in the direction of the uncontaminated field.

He stood there for a heart-hammering moment and watched her disappear into the grey dawn. He had to outrun the sunrise. If he weren’t so enthralled by love he would have felt the yellow windows of Jude’s house watching him like a stalking animal.

15.

Jude sat upright in his ‘thinking chair’ with a pair of binoculars. The chair had been King Henry VIII’s coronation chair and was just one of the many things Jude had pilfered from London during its population cleanout. A good pilfer was in keeping with British tradition after all. And who didn’t like to be surrounded by beautiful things? He was wearing a black velvet dressing gown covered with gold embroidered ivy patterns and a black sleeping cap with a gold tassel. It wasn’t the only golden tassel in the room. Two others held Jude’s mauve silk curtains in place. He put his foot on one of the chair’s carved lion heads and began muttering to himself.

“Interesting,” he said as he lowered his binoculars. “Now what is the connection between Dark Ansley and that stupid Keeper’s meddlesome daughter? Could this spell love?” He recoiled at the thought. “A here and now Beauty and the Beast?”

A cherub stood at the door. He was accustomed to Jude’s mumbling interspersed with delirious cackling and knew better than to interrupt Jude’s thought process. The room was a magnificent library with carved mahogany floor to ceiling bookcases. There was an oriental rug, a hook for Jude’s chandelier and a painting of some dark-haired woman that followed you with her eyes. It unnerved the cherub, but not as much as the bookcases, lined with rows of glass jars. There wasn’t a single book in sight. Inside the jars were the little green glowing spirals that Jude affectionately called his glow-worms. The room radiated a sickly light and the cherub couldn’t take it anymore. He cleared his throat to announce his presence.

“I know you’re there, stupid! What is it!?” Jude banged his foot on the lion’s head. “Can’t you see I’m thinking?”

“Sir, we have your glow-worms,” said the cherub.

“Sir?! What am I? A CEO?! No! I’m a prophet for goodness sake! And soon to be GOD of a new world! I told you I wanted to be called Master!”

“Master, we have your glow-worms,” said the cherub.

“Fine, fine put them over there with the others,” he said and dismissed the cherub with his hand.

The cherub didn’t move. He was tired of being treated badly, tired of the unsavoury, not to mention unhygienic, collecting of glow-worms and fed up with the whole dictatorship business.

“What are you waiting for?” Jude asked, annoyed.

“The magic word,” said the cherub, finally putting his fat little foot down.

“You mean ‘pleeeease’? Are you serious?” Jude’s mouth was full of contempt.

“It would be nice for a change,” said the cherub. He knew he was taking a big risk.

Jude spat out a laugh, sprang to his feet and bowed mockingly before the cherub.

“I beg your pardon. Please, please put the jar on the shelf,” he affected, walking towards the door and shutting it while the cherub did as he was told.

Jude stood behind the cherub, licked his lips, slipped his human body off and coiled around the cherub. “And now, I shall show you some real magic,” he said deliciously. “You dear, dispensable little creature.”

There were times the perks of the job outweighed the stresses and to be fair, the stresses were simply a product of Jude’s overwhelming success. Part of that success was pure luck and coincidental timing.

A few years before the world’s oil supply was predicted to run out, Conch Petrol untapped the world’s largest reserve of oil in the Alaskan tundra. Up until that point humanity had been begrudgingly preparing for its next adaptation. The discovery meant that there would be enough oil to support the expanding world for another three hundred years. Solar, wind and nuclear energy progress virtually stopped. Petrol prices plummeted and economies boomed. At the same time some boffins at Cambridge University worked out how to efficiently capture carbon and thereby prevent the increasingly turbulent global temperatures. The Greens and the Far Right shook hands and rejoiced. Less dependency on oil meant greater stability in the Middle East and a fairer division of wealth. It’s difficult to become radicalised when you are healthy, sheltered and fed. Financially united politicians tend to communicate and there was hope that the leaders could now be effective in sorting out the problem of population control and religious separation. The world wasn’t perfect, but it was getting better and the future seemed a promising place. It was a great age of prosperity and so a vast populace completely forgot about energy alternatives.

However, the relief ended when an enormous earthquake split Alaska in two. Over a single month earthquakes spread like a crack of lightening from Alaska, across Canada, then the Middle East and Russia. It was as if the earth was purging all of her oil and there was nothing anyone could do to stop her.

Oil seeped from the earth like a leaking wound and rolled into the ocean like black lava. The effect of the earthquakes was incalculable. Scientists stared at television cameras gape-mouthed as thousands of people, plants and animals died.

Of course the humans went mad, poor mites, thought Jude, they actually tried to collect the oil in buckets. Buckets! Oil covered bodies and leaking methane meant that human combustion happened so frequently that camera crews had to carry fire extinguishers with them.

The Earth’s purging was relentless and just after the earthquakes, over half of the agricultural land was found to be contaminated with prions of bovine spongiform encephatlitis; the plague of Mad Cow Disease.

Jude had predicted this event, well not him exactly, rather the scientist he inhabited, and his prophetic power increased with every new field that was found contaminated.

Madness spread and began killing an already compromised population. Suddenly the markets really were empty and farms were completely abandoned. Infected animals had to be dispatched and soil had to be tested before you could plant a single seed, hence food was becoming more and more limited.

At the end of the year all remaining people either died or localized. The organization of vigilante groups began and villages became territorial. The residents of those villages with uncontaminated land were the lawmakers. London was reserved for the outcasts and became an asylum where allotment owners were governors.

Parliament had promised a swift return to steam and coal but after the first year, there simply were not enough people to generate those powers. It wasn’t as if one day the Parliament buckled, rather it just dissolved like a lump of sugar in a hot drink. There was no single thing to promise, no single thing to fix, plus everyone was fragmented and the population was drastically reduced. One by one the remaining MP’s just walked away, accepting their role as a person who simply needed to eat.

Which was ideal for Jude’s plan. Things just seemed to fall into place, and for a while this delighted him enormously, but now it was beginning to feel too easy. He wondered if there wasn’t some divine trickery involved.

He needed to keep a close eye on the situation. Should he befriend Ansley or just kill him? If he killed him he may never discover the source of his worry, but if he let him live, he ran the risk of becoming a victim of divinity. He’d done that before and it was excruciatingly painful.

Of course, there may be nothing to worry about. He could be fretting over dust motes and hyperbole, he thought to himself as he curled up in his chair digesting the cherub. Too much brain discussion before coffee, he decided and rang his little bell. Another cherub appeared. They seemed never ending and everywhere, like chain-smoking Oompa Loompas, and Jude found solace in their persistence.

“Business as usual,” said Jude while the cherub stared at the bulge in his stomach. Jude was in his snake form and digesting the cherub slowly. “Oh don’t mind him, I’m nearly done here and will return to human mode soon. I’ll take my coffee early this morning. I think I’d like to drink it and watch the sunrise. And I don’t want to be disturbed,” Jude said and slid off the chair towards his suit of skin.

It was definitely time to do some investigating, he thought as he slipped into his human disguise.

16.

There was a bit of tilled land at the bottom of the uncontaminated field where Marianne knelt, made a basket out of her shirt and filled it with soil. It was going to be hard to part with the pearl even though it seemed the correct thing to do.

She entered the woodland. The plants were moist with cobwebs and dew. The woodland felt damp and alive as if it had been expecting her and she imagined the forest floor printed with footsteps. It was like following a map and she walked straight to the large beech tree of her image. The tree resembled a living, yet smaller, version of the tree petrified inside the chalk stack and she knew she had been lead there by the pearl.

She used her hands, dug a hole at its base, layered it with the uncontaminated soil and plucked the pearl from her leather pouch. It made a happy little slurping noise, like a root and she closed it inside her warm hand. Goodbye and be safe, she willed it, then dropped it inside the hole and covered it with the remaining soil.

It knew instantly it was where it belonged. Below the ground, a current of electricity cracked all the way to the earth’s molten core and every living thing awakened inside its consciousness. This shiver lasted for a mere second, but a second was all that was necessary to activate the new beginning. Marianne felt it like a pulsation.

Through the trees she could see the castle. It was quiet and fantastical. It seemed to throb as though it were in some kind of spellbound womb of amniotic sleep and she knew it was far, far away from her. And when a hand, white and crystalline, drew a curtain from behind her eyes, she knew she could shout and shout and the others would never wake up. Except Ansley, who was already awake.

The image of a stream entered her mind. She looked down and saw that a tiny crack had appeared where she’d buried the pearl and through it a silver gush began to trickle. It rolled up to her toes as though it were iridescent lava.

She bent down and touched it, a dollop stuck to her finger, the water was swirling as the pearl had done. She put the dollop in her mouth. It tasted like pure earth but without the grit. She wanted more. She put her face down to the crack and licked and sucked up all the water she could. She looked down at her bare arms. The hairs on them were glistening silver. She imagined her skin was the soil in which she’d planted a tiny moon. This idea, this notion grew inside her like a white flame, a warmth, a soul.

It was amazing how love had been waiting just below the surface of Ansley like a bubble ready to rise. It felt like instinct. Exactly how instinct can return to the body as soon as the body is responsible for its own survival. It seemed that there were unvoiced pulses that he just knew, just understood about her and their conversation.

He went straight to his desk, took out his notebook and wrote:

The thought of her dissolving in me