The Bloodlight Chronicles: Reconciliation (24 page)

His wife reached the pinnacle and looped her rope around a tree. She stood with her arms above her head, her palms to the sun, her face upraised in bold worship. She looked glorious.

She was probably praying again. She seemed to have fallen into the habit. He had seen her throw down her tools without provocation and shout her praise to the heavens with a voice like an angel. Other times she became sullen and meek and dropped her forehead with barely a sound. But he knew she was praying, her consciousness focused inward to infinity. She was convinced there was a Spirit guiding the Eternal virus, and perhaps there was. Zakariah had witnessed too many mysteries to argue against the possibility, but he was not inclined to rest on heavenly laurels. He would not give up his fate to unseen hands, to cosmic strategies. He would fight like a pirate till death.

Mia roused herself and bent back to her task. She pulled her rope taut and wound it around a sturdy pine stump. She tied a firm knot and stretched it tight. She waved an arm in the air and yelled.

Zakariah picked up his rusty crosscut saw and peered up the tree trunk one last time. The old dame was leaning badly but should swing with the gentle nudge of a rope when she began to waver. They were cheating gravity, but not by much, and a gentle wind off the lake worked in their favour. A couple of young birches would be crushed like kindling in the path of this hardwood monster, but the landing ground was otherwise clear. If all went well, she should miss the cabin by at least five metres.

He set his saw and pushed, and the bark gave way easily as he worked. The core of the trunk was dense and firm, and sawdust piled at his feet as he began to cut through rings of age. Decades stood here, perhaps a hundred years of growth, but even the old oaks must someday give up their ghost to Gaia. He paused for breath after a few minutes, wishing he had a chainsaw and a piece of protein in his belly. Sweat trickled down his naked ribs in hot rivulets. He rubbed his forehead with his arm and felt a coarse grit like sandpaper.

The rope was singing tight above him, and he could see his saw cut starting to gape open. If that rope ever snapped, he would lose her. His pulse began to race with panic as a cocktail of chemicals released into his bloodstream. He thought that he could taste each one. This was the heritage of man, a simple danger unadorned with digital bandwidth. This was life in the raw.

He smiled and bent to his work. He ripped his saw back and forth into the meat of years, and the tree cracked like a gunshot.

Zakariah froze. He checked for movement. Too late to quit now. Just do it. He set his saw gingerly and resumed his cut. He panted for breath as he worked. The tree cracked again, but he didn't stop. He could feel fibres snapping against metal teeth, his tool now an extension of his body, a living thing.

The gap widened and the trunk began to twist. The old oak howled with complaint as her back broke, and Zakariah jumped away in fear. A split in the trunk or a kickback could kill him at this point, but she toppled clean and fell with the sound of thunder. Baby birches bent and snapped like twigs and the ground shook like an earthquake. In a moment the crash was over, and the forest was silent. Even the birds ceased to sing.

Mia hooted exultant from her rocky pinnacle, her arms raised again with joy.

Zakariah pulled himself to his feet and brushed dirt from his pants. His stomach ached with hunger and spent adrenaline, but he felt a primeval satisfaction, a driving lust that must have guided his forefathers—the urge to build and destroy, to conquer and subdue, a hardwired destiny.

He cast down his crosscut saw and turned away. He walked toward the lake and stripped off his sweaty clothes. He jumped into the water and ducked his head under.

Mia joined him a few minutes later. She sat on a rock ledge and watched him as he swam and dove like a duck.

“Nice butt,” she said, and he pushed a stream of water at her with the heel of his hand.

“Coming in?”

“Maybe later.” She braced her arms beside her and reclined against a boulder.

He drifted close and stared up at her. A gust of wind wafted the curls on her forehead. Her hair had grown long and full to her shoulders, a soft tangle of gold.

“You look younger every year,” he said.

“I am younger every year, silly.”

He gazed past her at distant rolling mountains, an ancient backbone of land. The open landscape made him feel small and inconsequential, a bug on a vast surface. “We've got to get into town,” Mia said, “or find a supply depot somewhere. We're low on everything.”

“It's a long walk through the bush, but I guess we could use the exercise.”

“I'd like to pick up a pregnancy test while we're there.” She eyed him deliberately.

He paused for a moment and began to sink, but quickly splashed back above the surface. “You're pregnant?” he sputtered.

She smiled at his discomfit. “I guess that's what happens when you live for weeks on nuts and berries. It's not like there's a pharmacy within fifty miles.”

“I . . . I just never thought.”

“You don't expect me to apologize, do you?”

“No, of course not. It's great.”

“It's a new beginning, Zak. We'll have to go back to civilization. We can't hide forever.”

Zakariah kicked his feet and took a stroke backward, reluctant to hear his own secret thoughts given voice. He fingered the charred stump of cable behind his ear. He could get back to work.

“I noticed colour in the trees from the cliff top.” Mia pointed to scant patches of orange and red among distant maples. “In a few weeks the leaves will start falling. We might even get a dusting of snow.”

The thought made him shiver. The water felt chilly now that he had refreshed himself. “Where to this time? Back to the
ERI
?”

“It's up to you, Zak. I'll follow you back through the Doorway if I have to.”

“With a baby?”

“I know you don't remember, but we had a child once before. It's perfectly natural.”

Zakariah swam to shore and pulled himself up. The rocks near the edge were slippery with algae, and he stepped out of the water with care. He picked up his sweaty pants and began to knead them under the surface. A swirl of sawdust floated away.

“Do you think I gave up too much, throwing my backup disk out the window that day?”

“You had your reasons.”

“I couldn't risk contamination. I couldn't trust that little clone.”

“I know, Zak. Look, whatever happened in the past is far behind us now, the good and the bad. Memory is a two-sided sword. I made a lot of mistakes along the way that I'm glad you don't remember. We can start again. We can start fresh. These could be the good old days all over again.”

Zakariah laid his clothes out on the rock ledge to dry in the sun. He sat down naked beside his wife and draped his arm around her back. She rested her head on his shoulder and reached a hand to his abdomen. A family of mergansers swam in close to the shore, pecking at the weeds and diving in the shallows for food. The mother and father hung back at a distance, watching their brood protectively, ready to give alarm at any provocation. The young ducks seemed almost fully grown, wings strong and ready to soar, feathers tufted at the back of their heads like caps. They clucked happily as they zigged and zagged among the reeds and dove for minnows. A turtle climbed up on the shore and parked lazily on a driftwood log.

Steve Stanton's short fiction has been published in twelve countries, including translations into Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, and Romanian. In North America, his work frequently appears in
Rampike
,
On Spec
,
Neo-opsis
,
Tesseracts
,
Zymergy
,
Divine Realms
,
The Standing Stone
,
Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature
,
Poet's Gallery
,
BrightRedLife
,
ChristianWeek
,
Green's Magazine
,
Adventure Magazine
,
Canadian Writer's Journal
,
Mindflights
,
Pandora
,
Gateway SF
,
The Sword Review
,
Churchyard
,
Searching Souls
,
The Obligatory Sin
,
Christian Communicator
,
Dragons
,
Knights and Angels
, and
Chaos Theory
. He currently serves as the vice-president of SF Canada, the bilingual organization of science fiction, fantasy, and horror writers. Stanton lives in Washago, Ontario.