We depend on vast swathes of agricultural land for nourishment. We require networks of satellites and wires for communication and electricity. How quickly civilisation crumbles when both these systems fail. We believed we were the apex of the evolutionary pyramid and we were wrong. Humanity has never faced a crisis like this. Perhaps if we had stood strong, like the brothers and sisters we are supposed to be, we could have borne it. But no – we turned on each other. Calamity renders us back to our basest instincts. Squabbling over remaining resources extends its reach to every continent; every city, every household. Country borders are as fluid as water. In a matter of months, nowhere on Earth will be safe. The sun doesn’t recognise lines on a map or fictional borders. It speaks the ancient language of energy and matter.
Extract from The Last Bastion of the Anthropocene, Ester Akintola, the final UN Secretary General.
Fletcher screwed his eyes shut as he felt the jarring wrench of the transition to the spirit world. Head pounding, he pushed back against the nausea rising in his stomach, until it receded and left him feeling weightless. When he opened his eyes, he was standing on a rocky outcrop above a snowy plain, surrounded by a heavy white mist. Wind lashed him with sleet and Fletcher shivered.
Ana, the last earth walker, stepped out of the mist, grinning beneath her heavy furs.
Fletcher peered out into the grey, desolate sky. “What are we doing here, Ana?”
She pointed to a figure just visible on the snowy plain below. Fletcher watched the horse and rider approach. As they came closer, he made out the figure of a young girl riding a fine black horse bareback, her fur coat billowing in the wind. Several hundred metres behind followed a trio of riders, their mounts kicking up sludgy snow drifts. For a while, Fletcher watched their progress, then he turned to Ana. “They’re headed straight for us.”
She shrugged. “I guess they are.”
The girl was clearer now. Fletcher could hear the dark horse’s ragged breath as it pushed through the snow, see the spittle fly from its mouth. “How did she cover such a distance so quickly?”
“It’s a memory. Our memory,” Ana explained.
The young rider urged her horse onward, glancing over her shoulder at the men who pursued her. In a moment, she was almost on top of Fletcher and Ana and he stumbled backwards.
Ana stepped into the path of the oncoming steed. Oblivious to the earth walker’s presence, the rider pressed forward, then simply burst straight through her. The air around Ana rippled.
The girl whirled her horse around. It heaved for breath as it danced, ducking its head, its flanks foamed with sweat. The men in pursuit quickly made up ground. The girl leapt from her horse and prepared to face them. Beneath her fur cloak, her chest rose rapidly. Though her hair was matted and unkempt, and her face smeared with grime, Fletcher knew this was Ana. Much younger, but the girl’s eyes burned with the same determination as the earth walker. He waved a tentative hand in front of her face, but she didn’t react.
The three riders halted on the outcrop. Their horses snorted and steam rose from their shiny, damp bodies. “Return the grain or prepare to die,” shouted an enormous man. Not fat, but broad, his face half covered by a thick, wiry beard. “The vista bard is law. Hand me the barley, girl. I will not ask again.”
The young Ana stood firm, her gaze defiant. “It is not yours to take.”
Hairy jerked his head and, with a heavy thud, the other riders dismounted. The thickset men walked toward the young Ana, their movements slow and unconcerned. The girl held her ground.
Fletcher gripped his knife, ready to defend the girl. He glanced at the earth walker, but all she did was press a finger to her lips. “This is the good bit.”
Good? This tiny girl might be brave but she was not strong enough to fight off two fully grown men.
Before he could protest, an ominous rumbling filled the air. Thunder, Fletcher first thought, but then the earth beneath his feet shook. The rumbling grew into a heavy roar and the ground cracked open, zigzagging between the girl and her attackers. The split widened into a chasm that stretched deep into the ground. The man closest to the rift scrabbled desperately to maintain his balance at the edge of the growing chasm. Eyes wide with fear, he tumbled into the abyss, rocks cascading after him. The terrified horses whinnied and all but the leader’s mount turned and bolted.
From deep within the chasm, a fiery glow sent plumes of steam and ash high into the air. The second attacker staggered backwards, desperate to escape the wall of heat. “Holy shit,” Fletcher muttered. He’d just witnessed the birth of a volcano.
Ana turned and smiled. “Incredible, isn’t it? The earth spirit found me.”
By Fletcher’s reckoning, the rift ran for at least twenty metres. There was no way Ana’s surviving pursuers could double back. Through the smoke, Fletcher saw the young girl kneel with her head in her hands. Her black pony calmly approached and she reached out in wonder to the horse, her skin crawling with the familiar green glow.
“I still remember the feeling,” Ana whispered. “As if I’d been broken into a million fragments and rebuilt. Everything made sense – why Inga and I could do more than the other children and their ponies.”
The young Ana and her horse pulsated with green light. Fletcher’s skin also flared green.
Following its instincts, Hairy’s horse bucked savagely and dislodged the leader. The animal galloped back down the rocky mountain just as the chasm spewed an enormous burp of liquid fire. The two men didn’t stand a chance. The rock beneath their feet melted and oozed around them. The air filled with their tortured screams. The pulsating green sphere protecting the young Ana and her horse, Inga, flickered under the onslaught of molten rock then blazed heavenward as the eruption ceased.
“The earth spirit moves the continents like toys, blesses the soil with fertility, carves mountains and valleys,” said Ana, transfixed by her younger self and the green light dancing in the sky. “But much has changed since Nyx slowly wormed out of her prison. She has taken advantage of the air, sea and earth spirits’ weakness in the years without a walker. She tricked me.” Sorrow washed over Ana’s face. She turned to Fletcher. “You have to make it right.”
Then whiteness blanketed him and Fletcher’s ears filled with a sound like roaring water. “No, Ana, wait!” he yelled into the void.
Fletcher woke up in the semi-darkness of the cave, still wrapped in his sleeping bag. He rolled over and saw Bry kneeling by the butane burner, trying to coax a whisper of flame. Beyond the maw of their womb-like sanctuary, snow fell in infinite sheets.
Bry took the pot to the opening of the cave and filled it. He set the pot above the flame to boil and turned to Fletcher. “You saw her again.”
Fletcher crawled out of his sleeping bag and shrugged on his parka. “We’re getting closer.” It had taken five anxious days smuggled aboard a fishing boat to get past the border patrols, followed by weeks of hiking through the Icelandic wilderness. His whole body ached, although his muscles were slowly hardening as his strength returned. Bry passed him a mug of tea and Fletcher relished the warmth through his gloves.
Meeting Ana on the solstice had changed everything. She’d explained how Nyx had infected the earth spirit Gaia. How he was the only one who could free Gaia. Ever since, Ana kept dipping in and out of his mind when he slept, sharing snippets of her life. It was after one such dream that he’d stumbled into the farmhouse kitchen before dawn to find Bry sitting calmly at the dining table, reading by candle light.
Bry had understood. “You’re walkers. Able to bridge the divide between humans and animals. Nature constantly searches for ways to connect with us. It’s as if somewhere along the line, we lost the old ways of wholeness.”
They were still talking when everyone else staggered into the kitchen for breakfast. After that, they fell into an easy pattern – long nights spent at the kitchen table poring over maps and charts. Bry translated Fletcher’s visits with Ana into geographical and geological sense. Until one day Bry had pushed a heavily annotated map of Iceland across the table. “This is our route. We leave whenever you’re ready.”
And here they were, holed up in a tiny cave in the middle of the Icelandic wilderness, Fletcher’s initial certainty replaced by growing doubts.
Bry pressed a bowl of porridge into his hands. “Eat up. What else did you learn?”
Fletcher ran through a collection of memories. “She stole barley, talked about something called the vista bard?”
“That fits with our estimated timeline. The northern hemisphere went through an extended cold period we now call the Little Ice Age – the seasons merged almost into one, creating a long winter. Greenland and Iceland were the worst hit. The glaciation caused extensive failure of cereal crops. Many died. Icelanders began moving away from a grain-based diet toward a marine diet. Lots of salted fish. And the vista bard came into effect – effectively serfdom under another name.”
“Slavery?”
Bry scraped the last skerricks of porridge from his bowl. “Yes and no. The terms of the vista bard did entitle a labourer to move on to a new farm after a year. But the work was hard, the days long whichever farm you worked on. It would have been a bitter time to exist.”
The wind angled inside the cave. Fletcher pulled his beanie lower over his ears.
“What happens if you find this earth spirit, Gaia?” Bry asked, pulling on his jacket and scarf.
Focusing on his breakfast, Fletcher hoped Bry wouldn’t see the fear in his eyes. “I need to free Gaia from Nyx’s grasp, I’m just not sure how exactly. I’m hoping Ana will show me once we get closer.” The sense of failure blanketed him.
“Since you can’t go into the spirit world, is your bond with the earth spirit enough?”
Fletcher gripped his bowl tighter. “I don’t know. I couldn’t save Ariana when she needed me. Or Eva. Ariana and Eli are real walkers – they’re jetting around the world on rescue missions, saving people.” It was a knife in his gut, twisted anew with each passing day. The solstice had shown him what he’d always feared: he was not as strong as the others.
Bry didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he focused on meticulously repacking the cooking equipment, wiping each bowl and spoon clean with snow. Once he was done, he turned to Fletcher. “Did you know that I’m sixty-two? I still second guess my decisions, wish I’d done more to help. It never gets any easier.”
“I know I could have done more.” Fletcher wrapped his arms around his knees. “It’s like there’s a wild thing inside of me, desperate to get out. A greedy, hate-filled, fearful beast fighting with the part of me that is kind, brave and loving.”
The fear he strived so hard to keep in check rose up and threatened to paralyse Fletcher. His voice caught in his throat. “I don’t want the beast to win.”
Bry stared down at Fletcher huddled on the cold ground. “I believe in you, in what you’re doing.”
Fletcher stood and reached for his rucksack to hide the tears, but he wasn’t fast enough. The older man drew him into a hug. Fletcher squeezed the mountain goat of a man back, whispering, “Thank you.”
“Now come on,” Bry said, releasing Fletcher and hoiking his rucksack onto his back. He pushed through the snowdrift covering the cave entrance and Fletcher followed close behind. The spine of the mountain range was aglow in the early morning light, the sky achingly bright now the snow clouds had moved on. Bry pointed to the goat track weaving sinuously into deeper mist. “Early days yet, boyo.”