August Ansel - The Attic

“SUNDAY BREAKFAST.” They were on the roof together, all but Talus, and she’d been satisfied with a meal of her own and a nap in a patch of sunlight on the small bedroom floor. Even Renna was up top; it was a meticulous effort, but with a great deal of help, she’d managed it. “That’s what we’re going to call this,” Arie said. “It may just as well be Sunday.”

She’d been the first one awake. After a harrowing day and a night of scratch sleep, it was well into mid-morning when her bustling around had gotten everyone stirring. Now here they were, sitting on a blanket at the four corners of the compass, the sun warm and a fine meal ready. Renna angled herself to one side and used Handy’s shoulder as a backrest. Handy looked simultaneously self-conscious and exalted, and Arie hoped this little dance didn’t become a dangerous distraction. Curran had put the sun behind him but still squinted in the bright light, looking groggy and listless. They were all exceptionally quiet.

“Here, now,” said Arie. She handed around plates, like she might at a social occasion in the time before. “Let’s break bread. Every one of us needs mending and fuel.” She had taken great care to make the victuals seem more than adequate. Diced apples tossed with dried blackberries made a sort of fruit salad. The last of the roasted chicken was shredded with slivers of carrot and chopped cabbage and rolled into flatbreads she’d cooked over the fire pit. She’d even gone to her dwindling store of home-canned food and opened a half-pint of plum jam and a quart of dilly beans. The beans stood in a neat green bundle in the jar. The garlicky, briny smell of them was a brilliant snap, a piece of every August she could remember before the world died, that feverish month when the summer garden flung a vast amount of food into the world before the earth tilted away from the sun again. She took one of the beans now, a long, crisp spear, and savored the acid tang of vinegar on her tongue. “Now, that’s good,” she said, smiling. She handed the jar to Curran, who helped himself and passed it to Handy. Handy fished out two and handed one to Renna.

“Like communion,” said Renna. “With pickles.”

“True enough,” said Arie. She popped the rest of the dilly bean into her mouth and licked the sour juice off her fingers. “Last night it came clear to me what needs to happen here, quite clear. And one thing that we will do without fail is commune. Keep eating,” she said. “I want you to fill your bellies for the day ahead. I can talk and breakfast at the same time—all you three need to do for now is chew and listen.” She stood and wiped her hands on her apron. “I think better when I move.” She put her hands on her hips and looked out over the yard and street.

The day was perfect, full of birdsong. A woodpecker thrummed somewhere nearby, the hollow rattle somehow a comfort. “This is the first time I’ve stood here and not given a tinker’s damn what might see me,” she said. There was the slightest intermittent breeze; it lifted a tendril of her white hair and rattled a few errant leaves in the corners of the roof. “By God, I feel like Peter Pan,” she said. She lifted a fist and shook it at the street and the wide woods beyond. “Nuts to you, Captain Hook,” she said. When she turned, all three of them sat stock-still, food in hand, staring. “Gods, what a failure of imagination,” she said, waving them off. “Just hear me out.” She began to walk from the rope ladder to the garden boxes, from the garden boxes to the jerry can, the jerry can to the sky panels—six paces one way, eight another, three, five—then around the circuit again.

“Strange, isn’t it,” Arie said, “what’s happened in a day’s time. Last full moon I was alone. Each of you was somewhere else. Yesterday, Curran, we thought you meant to kill us, and for a little while we came close to killing you.” Curran nodded, silent, and Handy chewed contemplatively, gazing into the middle distance. Only Renna made eye contact, her breakfast set aside.

“From the first day, when we met in the clearing,” Arie continued, “I’ve resisted. Resisted you, Brother, and you, too, Renna. That’s been my way, the way I chose years before the Pink burned through. I chose the Null Folk, and the Null are anchorite in their ways. That’s no secret.”

Renna opened her mouth to speak, and Arie held up her two hands. “Wait, Renna. Let me say it all. We’ll commune, I promise, but not yet.” She pondered just how to tell them what needed telling, what to say. What to withhold. She leaned between Handy and Curran and plucked one of the last dilly beans from the jar.

“The full moon is a holy time for me,” she said. “I made it so and have kept it so.” She’d brought up a stoneware pitcher, and she filled it now from the jerry can. Tucked out of the sun, the stored water was cool in her hands. She put the jar in the middle of the blanket and kept moving while they filled their cups. “I have no god. My devotion since I was old enough to choose has been to my true Mother, the earth, and to the great generative force of the universe, though it’s a mystery.” She finally stopped her wandering and came back to the blanket. She sat down again between Renna and Curran and straightened her apron over her lap. Renna poured Arie a cup of water, and she took a long, cool swallow. The unseasonable weather had warmed the asphalt shingles, making them smell faintly of tar and radiate heat like an afternoon sand dune.

“Like all pure devotion,” she continued, voice quiet, “the ritual is also madness. I’m aware of it.” She took another sip of water. “It’s the madness of a single night each month that clarifies, that lends sanity and illumination to a life that might otherwise drive reason away altogether.” She paused and looked at them—first Curran, then Renna, and finally Handy. Each one she measured, eye to eye. “Last night it was given to me to understand that I was pushing. I was wrong. My responsibility, and my gift, is to open.” She turned both hands palm up. The cut on her thumb from the day before was uncovered, crusted and mending. “Curran,” she said. “Renna. Handy. Your lives are your own, but your sojourn has intersected mine. I will embrace that for now—a temporary juncture.” In the beat of silence that followed, a raven called nearby, a rusty croak like an unoiled gate falling open. “Whether we choose to traverse together from here is ours to decide, is it not?”

“Yes,” said Renna. She touched Handy’s arm.

“I think time is short, though. Do you feel it? We need to mark that feeling—we ignore it at our peril, I believe.”

“We do,” said Handy. “We’re too visible.” He looked at Curran. “You found us,” he said. “You won’t be the last.”

“This whole area is on their agenda,” said Curran.

“Agenda,” said Arie. “You mean the group at the high school, yes?”

Curran nodded and rubbed at his eyes. “The Konungar,” he said.

Handy frowned. “The what?”

“That’s what they call themselves. Their leader is this guy Russell, and he has a thing about Iceland, talks about it constantly. He got them calling the school New Reykjavík, and the bosses are the Konungar—the Kings. A couple of weeks before I got out of there, Russell and—”

“Not now,” said Arie. “I want to hear all of it, Curran. Forewarned is forearmed, and that’s our aim. There’s too much we don’t know, and we can’t keep bashing around, each of us keeping our own piece of the puzzle tucked in our pockets. Tonight you’ll tell us whatever you can about the encampment. From you, too, Renna.”

Renna paled, but nodded. “Whatever I can.”

“Handy, I want to know from you what kind of journey it is between here and God’s Land. It’s only fair that everyone understand the trip they’re in for.” She cocked her head and gave him a level stare. “And what sort of place they’re aiming at, too.”