I could hear them down the hall… playing video games, talking to the dog? the cats? I don’t know. I was content enough to stand at the butcher block counters and cook instead. All my utensils and needs lined up in a very neat row against the colored tile backsplash, laid against beautiful sage-green walls. Calming. Carefree.
Waves beat against the cliffs outside and I knew without doubt what was waiting down the shore. I didn’t pay attention. Instead I directed my mind towards making better meringue in a small white stand mixer with a steel bowl, and getting sourdough and ciabatta toast ready. Light fluffy eggs, parbroiled in a brand new stainless steel oven and toast browned in the simple white toaster, before being set in a skillet with browning butter.
Down the coast, they combed the beaches and the caves. Crawled over the rocks like black insects flashing oilslick colors in the light. Everything they searched for was already lying safe with me… and I was Busy.
Their technology had given them the blueprints of every room hewed into the rock of the cliffs. The sea stacks towered over the water, their insides riddled with maze like catacombs and hiding places for the People. I knew their places, intimately. Had watched over them in silence, I could not tell how long. Witness, called up from the blackness of my own Deep Dark.
The black gravel slid like sand under my feet, leaving its mark in swirling smoke stains along my calves. I felt no burning. The cave walls were sharp and slick, no blood flowed from any touch of mine. Other voices howled in the dark, my own did not join them. Closer than their next breath, farther than they could ever hope to reach.
The yolks joined the fluffy white nest beneath the broiler, and the toast, now closer to french than plain browned bread, was slid onto plates round and white as the moon. Music came from somewhere, and its echo matched my heartbeat as I moved from the island to the counter and back again, smooth as a dancer. I could see past the pillars into the living room if I cared to… I did not. No need. I knew where they were; the second half of my soul and my god; without needing to reassure myself with my dreaming eyes.
I knew the three that led just as intimately as the new technology had betrayed their secrets to the outside world. I did nothing. The red plants that grew like spider’s legs outside the entrance to their dwellings tore at clothing and shredded skin… I knew too well the numbing effect its thorns could have. I said nothing. The earth swallowed them whole.
Things in the deepest reaches stirred. Not ours, not ours, not our People. And the figure on the beach merely whispered to the ice-salt wind “no.”
The earth moved.
I looked into the distant sea, leaned against the sun-warmed glass of the door, pulled aside the curtains. Just our cliffs, the edge of the bluffs, sloping down and away into the raging spring seas below. Just green, and yellow, and the deep grey and dirty whites of any northern coastline… I remembered the blacks and the reds. I remembered soaring on aching wings down the riverlands, over downed trees and under ever-growing canopies. Saw mouths yawning wide to catch the unwary, black and brown fur and slick shining scales alike.
I heard the thunder as yet one more world slid into the unforgiving salt deep… its children resigned to their fates or accepting of this turning of the Wheel. But the timers were going off, and there were things to be cleaned in a stainless steel sink, food to plate, and lovers to call to the table.
I paused at the shelf above the oven, a spidery plant in black, grainy soil. It nearly seemed to smile back at me as smoky stains ran along an outstretched finger.
I think we understand each other.
House Of Crows 