FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #7

           "She's a local." He indicated the ancient woman just stepping through the doorway.  “But, she’s the only one here can claim that.”

            Her skin was so wrinkled and scarred; I thought her deformed.  Then, it dawned on me what the store keep meant, “You mean she was here before?”

            The middle aged man nodded, gaunt features adding to his grave tone. “My father’s men found her here when they resettled the place, ten years after the disaster, holed up in the old light house.  No one knows for sure how she survived.  The rest of this town was wiped clean: nothing but bleached bones and scarred metal.”  He paused.  “But that’s not what you meant by local.  Is it?”

           Still distracted by the old woman’s history, I mumbled, “No, I meant…”

           “I know what you meant, and it’s me you’re looking for: Sam Walker, proprietor of this trading post and mayor of this town.”

            Taking my mind off the woman, I said, “I’ve come from Sarnia with a trade offer.”

            “Sarnia?” Walker’s dark brow wrinkled in apprehension. “What do they want with us?”

            “You’ve heard of our city then?”

            “City?  I hear you all got a virtual kingdom down there.  So I say again, what do you want with us?”

            The man’s anger was obvious.  I began to wonder if the rumors about our ‘raiders’ were true.  Some folks I had met on the road said Sarnian raiders had robbed them blind and ran off with their oldest daughter.  I, of course, didn’t believe them.  Sarnia didn’t have raiders.  At least, I didn’t think so.  So, I shrugged off the man’s caution and continued, “Your town is the only one we know of with a surviving light house.  Do you know if it’s still operational?”

            “Probably not.  It would have been stripped for parts years ago.  Why?”

            “We’re looking to sail.”

            “Are you crazy?”

            “We found records of an underwater base somewhere in Huron.  But we can’t risk leaving without knowing we can find our way back.  You know nights on the water are too treacherous for travel.”  I thought if I indicated his knowledge, he might feel complimented.

            “All water travel is treacherous.” He said.

            So, I fell to the universal language, “I have things to trade: very useful things.  Just let me take a look at the light house.”

            That did it.  “Let me see what you’ve got.”

            I pulled out a long butcher knife and laid it on the counter. “That’s a pure steel blade with an oak handle.”

            Picking the knife up in one skinny fist, the mayor said, “Good metal’s hard to find these days.”  He knocked on the wooden handle.  “You can look in the lighthouse all you want, but come back if you want to use it.”

            “Thank you.”  I felt so relieved I nearly ran into the old lady, who had come up behind me.  “Oh, I’m sorry ma’am.”

            “You going to my light house?” She looked at me with piercing black eyes that held all the sorrow of the world.

            “Yes, I…”

            “Now, Miss Horse,” Mr. Walker interrupted, “you leave that man alone.”

            “It’s alright.” I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with curiosity for this woman. “What was your name?”

            She thought for a moment, then appeared puzzled, “My name?  I don’t quite remember...”

            The mayor interrupted again, “We call her Miss Horse, on account of the fact she’s always mumbling about horses.  When everyone knows there hasn’t been horses round here for years.”

            As if on cue, she looked at him and said, “Horses?  Where are my horses?”

            “See.” He placed the knife on a shelf behind him as he explained. “There used to be a big ranch here back before the disaster, so we figure she probably worked there or something.  Well, you better get going if you want to make it to the lighthouse before dark.”

            I nodded my agreement, but couldn’t help thinking about that woman as I made my way across the sparse fields along the coast.  There was just something about her.  Maybe if I could find out her real name, there might be a record of her in the archives back in Sarnia.  Not that they were what most people would call archives.  They were more a collection.  Anything we could find from before went in there: books, music, photos, anything that might keep the past alive.  For the small town mayor was right, not many folks were left from before, and they were growing fewer by the day.  I decided to speak with the woman when I return to town.  Perhaps I could even convince her to come with me back to Sarnia.  The physicians there might be able to help restore some of her sanity.

           With that thought in mind, I caught my first glimpse of the lighthouse.  Crumbling tan brick rose from a clump of stunted black trees, crowned by a pointed, russet roof.  Quickening my pace, I soon reached the surprisingly dense foliage and at once became apprehensive.  I had never seen so many trees still rooted to the ground before.  They looked dead in every way, but they were firm to the touch.  When I attempted to break a branch off, it bent instead.  I had read once that when trees were green they did not break and crumble the way ours did, but these trees were black.  Cautiously, I crept through the only forest I had ever seen and noticed a vine covered mound at the base of the cylindrical building.  Finding no clear entrance at the base of the lighthouse, I began searching the mound.  I soon found a hole in the black vines, and, warily, entered what appeared to be a small building.  With the fading light shafting in through the former ceiling, I could see a crumbling staircase leading to a missing second floor.  Although little else remained to indicate what the building was used for, a large stone fireplace suggested someone might have lived there at one time.  In the back, another opening led to the lighthouse itself.

            As I climbed the surprisingly well kept stone stairs, I began to wonder why the old woman still claimed the lighthouse as her own.  When I reached the top, I got my answer.  While the service room was barren, all manner of salvage filled the tiny lantern room.  In one corner, a pile of dirty blankets passed for a sleeping mat, but the rest of the room looked akin to a child’s treasure chest.  There were pieces of string and scraps of fabric, colored glass bottles and shiny metal cans, carved wooden figures and jagged lumps of rocks.  I even found several dented, rusty knives and small hatchet.  As I searched through the junk for remnants of the lantern and lens, the sun slowly began to dip below the horizon.  The urge to give up tempted me, when suddenly I heard a step behind me.  Whipping out my knife, I spun around to find the old woman holding a crude torch.

            “I’m sorry, did I startle you?” Her dark eyes indicated the weapon.

            I sheathed the dagger, “No, well, yes you did.”  I sighed, “I’m the one who should be sorry.  These are your things aren’t they?”

            “No,” she placed the torch in a ring on the wall, “they are things from the past and from the present, but I do not claim them.”

            “Then why do you collect them here?”

            “To keep them safe.” She carefully picked her way through the room to the center, where the lantern used to be, and pulled some kindling from her coat.

            “You seem more…lucid then you were in town.”

            “You mean I seem sane.” She laughed, a small, knowing laugh, “I am always better here, in my lighthouse.”

            That made some sense, I decided.  The lighthouse was probably also the only place she felt safe.  Perhaps she even knew something about where the lantern or the lens was, so I asked.  With a sly grin, she pulled back the blankets to reveal a large, metal box with a broken latch.  When we opened it – the lid was far too heavy for her to move on her own – I could not believe my luck.  There sat the lens, in better condition than I could have hoped for.  Much to the woman’s dismay, I pulled her into my arms and lifted her off the ground in delight.

            Once I got over my excitement, she continued to prepare a fire, while I looked over the lens with meticulous precision.  “You know,” I told her, “with the lens this well kept, we could probably just build a flame fed lantern.”

            “Mmm” was the woman’s only reply as she pulled out a can of food and poured the contents into an iron pan.  When I realized what she was doing, I pulled the last of the salted jerky from my pack and offered it up.  She politely refused, but a haunted look lingered in her eyes.  I thought it better not to ask.  Instead, I inquired about her real name.

            “Sarah,” she replied, “but I don’t mind them calling me Horse.  What’s yours?”

            “Paul.”

            She nodded and we ate in silence until I finally summoned the nerve to ask, “What happened here?”

            She looked up, startled, as if she had forgotten I was there.  Then her black eyes went distant, “The same thing that happened everywhere else.”  At first, I thought she would stop there, but, after a long moment, she continued, “After the first attack, we panicked.  I suppose the whole world did.  When the attacks kept coming, they called everyone into town and I went to the lighthouse.” She said this as if it were the normal thing to do; go to the lighthouse.  I thought who goes to a lighthouse during a disaster.  Suddenly her head sank between her knees and she said in a defeated voice, “I couldn’t save them.”

            I did not know what to say, so we sat in silence as the moon rose higher and the fire dwindled.  Around midnight she crawled to her blankets as though the weight of the world lay on her shoulders.  Quietly, I pulled out my own sleeping pad.

            When the sun pulled open my eyes, Sarah was already cooking breakfast and humming a tune, the previous night’s unease forgotten.  Eating the unrecognizable stew, we shared what we knew about the workings of lighthouses and how we might go about repairing this one.  I decided we should test a prototype before I headed back to my colleagues in Sarnia.

            We attacked the most challenging piece first, the lens mount.  Lacking any kind of electrical or even basic motor power, the only choice remaining was to build a weight driven clockwork assembly.  Having studied lighthouse construction in depth in preparation, I knew how to build one.  The problem would be the materials.  Basic building supplies were scarce, even in Sarnia.  And this town had been rebuilt with nothing but twisted metal.  Hardly any workable materials remained.  The solution, however, was right in front of me.

            “The trees!” I exclaimed.

            Sarah shuffled after me as I bolted down the stairs and out the doorway.  Grabbing the nearest branch, I hacked at it excitedly till it broke free.  “Look,” I turned to Sarah, “it is!”

            “Is what?” She grumbled.

            “Wood!  It’s real wood!” I showed her the dark inside of the branch.  All of a sudden, I noticed something was wrong with Sarah.  She looked almost ill. “What it is Sarah.  What’s wrong?”  I moved to comfort her.

            “My…” She took the branch from my hand.  There were tears in her eyes as she said, “my horses.”  At first, I thought her sanity was slipping, then she said, “They’re here you know.  They gave me this forest.”

            “They…”  Then it hit me.  They’re buried here.  But that doesn’t make any sense.  If the trees grew here, why didn’t they grow elsewhere too?  There are unmarked graved everywhere you go.  Why would trees grow here?  And why are they black?

            “You must mustn’t you?”  Her sobs yanked me from my thoughts.  “It has to work and this is the best way.”  I embraced her as she wept, trying to dry tears I did not understand.  “They’re all I have left.”

            “I’m sorry Sarah,” I said helplessly, “I’m so sorry.”

            When her tears dried, she became suddenly determined.  We worked almost nonstop till moonrise and started early the next day.  Though I wanted so badly to ask about Sarah’s past, I could not bear to see her in pain again, so I kept our conversations on the lighthouse.  Two days later, the lens mount was completed and we celebrated with the small packet of sugar I had in my pack.

            The lamp took much less effort to complete.  The fire would need to be quite high and able to burn consistently, so we contrived a system of pulleys that would allow someone in the watch room to feed it without getting burned.  The next day, I went into town to trade for oil while she cleaned out her fire pit in the lantern room.  When I returned, she sent me right back for bricks to build up the pit’s walls.

            “Now all we have to do is test it.” I said over dinner that night.

            “Tomorrow,” she said, sensing my restlessness, “tomorrow.”

            Just before dawn, I woke to a harsh noise coming from below.  Quietly, I alerted Sarah and pulled my knife.  Too dark still to see out the window, we crept outside and squinted at a small torch.  Beside it were two men with a rough metal cart.  A third provided the source of the noise.  He was sawing vigorously at one of the trees with a long butcher knife.

            Sarah gasped and I shouted, “Who goes there!”

            The three were startled, but the one at the tree yelled back, “None of your damn business!”

            But one of the others replied, “We have as much right to this wood as you do.  Now we know it’s not dangerous.”

            “No, you can’t,” said Sarah, leaving my side.  “They must stay here.  You can’t take them.”

            “Sarah don’t.” I tried to grab her arm, but she pushed me away with more force than I thought she possessed.

            The man with the knife turned toward her. “Are you going to stop me?”

            Sarah’s body trembled with rage as she suddenly broke into a screaming run, tackling the first man she came to.  I tried to pull her off, but she would not come.  There was a loud crack as the man’s arm snapped like a dry twig.  His friends joined in then, though I did my best to stop them.  The one with the knife dove at Sarah.

            “No!”  But I was too late.  Sarah lay on the ground with the knife buried deep in her belly.  “You bastards!” I cried, going to her.

            “She…she attacked us!”

            “She’s an old woman!”  I cradled her head in my arms, “Sarah?”

            She took a shuddering breath and looked down at the knife with a strange tenderness. “That was a silly thing to do wasn’t it?”

            “Let me …” She cut me off as if she did not hear me.

            “I don’t know what got into me.”  She gazed at the three men, who had backed away to tend the broken arm. “They’re right you know.  I shouldn’t keep these to myself.  Not now.  They have served their purpose.”

            “Sarah, please.”

            Her hand reached for my face. “Paul, I’m dying.  I have been for a while now.  This is far more merciful.  I wish I could have seen your lighthouse working though, before I die.”

            “My lighthouse?” I looked to the tower and sighed.  It did feel like home now.  More that Sarnia ever did.

            “She is yours now.  Take good care of her.  And try to save at least one of my trees.”

            “I will, Sarah. I will.”

            As the sun’s crimson light crept over the ashen foliage, I felt her last breath leave like a sigh of relief.  I carried her body up the long steps to the lantern.  With careful deliberation, I built her pyre inside.  Then, laying Sarah on top, I lit the first lighthouse in over thirty years.

back to Contest #7