Ellen Datlow - After - Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

The woman looks at me. I feel terrible about the dandelions. I wonder if I should give them back. As is tradition, I take her hands in mine. I have not touched many hands in my life. Her hands are rough and cracked and dry. That is when I notice her birth marks. She has seven. On her left arm. Seven babes, all gone down. This will be her eighth to go down.

Jas has already taken the babe in his arms and put the poison on his finger for the babe to suck. In a few minutes the babe will sleep and never wake up again.

“Thank you,” the woman says. Her eyes are hard, but mine are not. I am crying as she leaves the tent.

Jas moves close to me.

“The first one is always hard,” Jas says. “It gets easier.”

“How can it get easier?” I ask.

Jas shrugs. “It just does.”

He leaves me to myself as I do my job of packing the machines. I try to remember that we are performing a kindness. No one, the Way says, except for those who are three or four for four, will live for very long. It is better for them to go down when they are young. It is less painful than to know them and then put them down.

“Orange and Brown is so rare, though,” I say.

“Yes,” Jas says. “Very rare.”

“Why couldn’t we have spared her for the orange and brown?”

“The sequence. Three or four for four. It is what we live by. It is our code. It is the law.”

After one week, we arrive at the next town that needs us.

We are halfway through the feast when a man comes from a remote village. He has heard through the Romas that we were on the road. He comes to plead his case.

“We are a small town. Very small. We are new. We have only two girls who are of age. We are prepared to give so much for just this chance. We are ready to join the Way.”

Sometimes this happens. New towns form. The Romas get tired of wandering and fighting, and they settle down and make a town. In order to grow, they must join the Way. It is hard. The Romas take a chance by inviting the Paters in. The girls must be tested to see if they will fit into the Way. If they do, then Paters will be sent to them. If not, then they will not join the Way and the town will likely die.

Jas is the oldest. It will be him to decide. It will be him who will go with the man to visit the girls. He consults with the man. They look at me.

“Geo,” Jas says. “They are desperate. The Way is their best chance. And they have birds.” Birds are rare. My stomach and eyes delight at the thought of birds.

“Why don’t you go?” I ask Jas. He should go. He is the leader. He is the Counter. I am just an Apprentice Counter. But then, as I look at him closely, I see that I don’t have to have him give me an answer. I can see by the way he holds himself, as though it is with great effort to stand, by his paleness and by the way he has spent so much time by the side of the road, like the others. It will not be long before the fact that he is ill will be known to all. It seems as though many people in all of the towns are ill. But I have not weakened at all. The walk has made me stronger.

“I will do it for the birds,” I say.

I will be gone a few days, and that will give the group a chance to rest and get better while I do our duty.

The man is so thankful, he pumps my arm up and down as though I will give water. It is shocking to be touched. But he is crying. And I try to remember that the Romas ways are not our Ways. He gives a sack of goods to Jas, with the promise for more upon my return.

I get my pack and find the man waiting by the gate. It is strange for me to leave on my own with a stranger. His accent is difficult to understand, but we make do with hand gestures and good will. We begin to walk. I can tell that he is sorry that I have to walk because it is far and the terrain is treacherous. And I am a Pater. I try not to let on that I am only an apprentice and have never seeded anyone, and that this is my first trip, and that after two hours my feet are in pain. I am his hope. I must always look like it.

We are walking up and up and up a mountain. As we turn on the path, the valley and the ocean spread out below us. The view takes my breath away. The water is silver, the sky is blue, and the ruins from two cities are in perfect view. I cannot help but wonder at the amount of people who lived there once. I cannot imagine the world without worry of extinction. The trip is worth it for this moment of beauty and sadness. My guide stops with me, and we both take a moment to ponder our fate, given to us by those who lived in those impossible buildings.

Jas has been slowly teaching me how to read the words of those from the ruined cities. He says that sometimes the answers to our questions lie in there. But the books are fragile and cannot stand the light. And many things that are written are confusing and incomprehensible. But I am always amazed at the things those people seemed to be able to do. Even everything in ruin seems more than what we are able to accomplish. I am amazed.

My guide nudges me, and I tear myself away from the view. I discover that I am close to crying, so I try to hide it, as though there is dust or sun in my eyes. I make a big show of adjusting my hat. But I think that my guide knows my heart. For he puts his arm around me and squeezes my shoulder in a sympathetic way. A way that says, “My heart is heavy for us all, too.”

Just before sunset, we make it up to the village, if you can call it that. It is five houses and a well. Most of the few people here are old. Very old. These are Romas who are too tired to roam.

Here, in this village, there are two girls who are my age, in their sixteenth or seventeenth year. They have no tattoos. No one has tattoos. Romas don’t have their line on their arms. They are outside of the Way. I look at the girls in a respectful manner, with my eyes down. Their features are different than the girls and women I know. One of the girls is shy. She looks at her feet and hides her face behind her hair. The other girl, who is more homely, comes up to me. She looks at me in my eyes, which makes me feel strange. As though she is looking right inside of me. No one looks at anyone like that. It is disturbing, but I take it to be another of the strange ways of the Romas. She motions for me to follow her, and she shows me to a small shack where I will sleep. From her pocket she pulls out a red thing. She polishes it on her shirt and hands it to me. Then she takes one out for herself and begins to eat it. I have never seen something like it. I sniff it and smell a faint pleasant perfume. I bite into it. It is not soft, but hard, yet it is juicy and it makes my tongue feel alive.

“Good?” she asks.

“Good,” I say.

“Minerve,” she says, extending her hand in what I know to be a Romas grip. It is a greeting among them. We of the Way usually do not touch one another, but I extend my hand and touch hers. It feels electric.

“Geo,” I say.

She smiles. I notice that her eyes are green. I have never seen green eyes.

As she goes she closes the door behind me and leaves me to my preparations.

This town is so far out of the Way that there is no feast. Minerve comes back later and brings me a plate of food. Everything on the plate looks strange. Some of it I do not care for. But most of it is alive with flavor. When I am done eating, I feel full in a way that I have never felt before.

I begin my preparations. I will have to give them all a tattoo. I must choose a color and enter it into the book. I consult the charts. I notice that red has faded out a long time ago; it has not been used for more than fifty years. It makes me think that orange and brown will go that way soon, too, unless things change. But red has been gone for so long that it will be safe to give this town red. I am allowed to be with red. I like Minerve. Would it be wrong to make her a line that I can seed? I blush. But still, I settle down in my room to mix the color. If the girls are three for four, then I will give this town the color red.