A Marked One's Dream

***Warning: This piece of science fiction may be a trigger if you have experienced severe bullying or sexual violence***

Walking along the lake shore she had found the water snake, suspended, undulating with the gentle waves. Her scales -- was she a she? She really didn't have any way of knowing, but in her mind, there was a tenderness that said so -- her scales glistened a wet silver that she might have wished upon her own skin had she known the language. She lifted the snake from the water, slowly, unsure of how the creature would hold the weight of her meter's length in open air.

As she let the creature curl around her arms, she got lost in the texture and feel of the animal's skin, so like her own.

Whether it really was a sense of completion or the familiar tension remembered she did not know, or perhaps would not let herself know. But she stood up and released the creature back into the water right where she'd found it. Too close, her mind screamed, and as she heard their voices from the far trees, her mind screamed too late! Now she could distinguish the highs and lows of their snickering, the differences between their conspiring voices, ever half-whispering, half-threatening amongst themselves as if discussing tactics, grudges, and uncertain alliances that were never to be admitted, even among friends. Or else.

Luckily, she was already among the trees when they came sauntering along the shore. They seemed unaware of her. From her hiding place, she prayed to the creature, who hung in the water like a sting of glistening gems. Alone.

Go, she said with her mind. Go! Curse this meat-mind and its lack of telepathy! Go! Out into the open water as far as you can go!

But the creature only hung, oblivious. Then one of them snickered. From her hiding place she watched as they lay the creature on a stump, smashed her body with rocks they found, tore out her innards with their knives. Their eyes bulged at the blood, and so did their smiles. They laughed triumphantly as they twirled the half-alive creature's exposed skeleton and dangling innards over their heads.

Today, she had been elected their leader. She would now be the one to inspect their uniforms, the shine of their boots and buckles. The election had been a coup led by this younger cohort.

Her own cohort, and even Leadership, had made its opinion known. Tony was her own age, yet Tony had pointed at her with authority, and said "anyone who even nominates him to the Order will be--" She was afraid to remember what Tony had said, or implied. She remembered only that whatever Tony had said or implied felt as impersonal as places in the mountains do when they have become forgotten, and unreachable. Whatever Tony had suggested had been something no one as young as Tony should have known how to say.

She wandered. Wandered as the sun set, and as the moon rose over the far side of the lake.

Let them wonder where I am. Let them find me, and let them spew their hatred.

Her feet carried her to a great rock along the shore. There she found the boy, his uniform and hair caked with mud. She found him alone atop the rock, inspecting it with his hands. The boy was perhaps much younger, or maybe just small, as many from the newer cohorts seemed to be. At any rate he was of some other cohort. And barely knowing him, and sensing that maybe they really were alone, perhaps she could trust him.

Walking about the rock, she sensed, or feared, that someone had shaped the granite. Its contours were too even, its lines too straight, its planes too smooth, its shape too symmetrical. But what do I know of such things? I am a child. Wind and water can make such shapes on their own, can't they?

The boy said, "Maybe it was left by the sky people."

She climbed onto the rock and watched his gliding hands find holes in the weathered surface hidden under a layer of sand.

At least these holes were for sure made by people.

Leadership hinted that Before People had lived here. Did their hungry spirits wait for stragglers on the march, for the weak ones who might be lured to death or madness by their own hidden desires?

She felt along the edges of one of the holes. She squatted as she'd imagined women of the Before People would have squatted. She placed her hands where their hands would have been, as they ground flour from whatever they could forage, century after century.

She dug the sand out of the hole, awed by her imagined communion with these women of the Before People,

I am occupying the very space they did! I am squatting as they did! Were they really so different? What were their personalities like? Had their women been like the women I'd once known, this one maternal and forlorn, that one curious, and quietly aware?

She tried to imagine the language they had spoken right here, under this very same moon.

Then she found things at the bottom of the hole. At almost the same moment, the boy, whom she had forgotten in her reverie, exclaimed. He had found things in his hole too.

He was still half-innocent, for when she commanded, he opened his hand though she hadn't opened hers. Regret passed over his face. Nevertheless bits of rusty metal lay exposed upon his palm. These were bent and twisted and perhaps melted in places, but not so much that one wouldn't see that they were components of something, meant to fit together, meant to fit with other things as finely made, and meant for some forgotten purpose.

With her palm still closed, she looked at what he had, and said wishfully, "They're from the Before People."

"No, they're not," he cried. "They couldn't make things like this! The Before People were stupid. They deserved what happened to them!"

"How do you know what the Before People were," she asked.

"These are just dumb useless things," the boy cried. With that he threw them out into the moonlit water.

"You're so dumb," he added, as if gathering his dignity.

She turned, for she knew she could not show tears, even to one this young. She leapt off the rock, and hid her body against its darkness. The objects in her clenched fist were hard, heavy, and sharp. She waited.

"You're so dumb," the boy repeated. "You're a one-head!"

She waited.

Poking out from her hiding place long enough for him to meet her eyes, she said too brashly, "Shut up, stupid!"

He grimaced at her menacingly, baring his teeth the way he probably imagined his sky people would.

She couldn't even respond to an insult or expression this juvenile. She was easy, and he knew it.

She froze, quivering, her eyes suddenly frantic and still glistening, betraying her overwhelm to this boy and anyone else who might be gleefully watching from the shadows of the trees.

Losing control like this with even a child this small would cost dearly as the word spread, and it always did. The worst part, she knew, was that she really didn't know what to do. She wasn't really just pretending. She couldn't even describe the question that gripped her body:

Why?

Was it a question? Or a plea?

They would have only laughed if she had known how to say it wasn't for herself alone.

She swallowed hard, and the boy laughed, amazed just how easy she was.

But this boy would get bored eventually, as they always did. Then she would have until morning, and whatever it brought, to be with the moon and shore and cool night air, and whatever she held in her hand.

The boy did grow bored, leapt from the rock and ran back toward the camp, laughing to himself over his conquest and whom he would tell of it.

And she did still have whatever was in her hand.

Instinctively, warily, she looked about. She gulped hard again. If they're watching from the shadows, I'll never spot them. If I spot them, I'll never catch them. If I catch them, I'll be the one to answer for whatever I do.

I have to risk it, right here on the open shore.

She stood in the moonlight and opened her palm.

Like what had been in the boy's hand there were bits of bent metal, some shiny, some rusty. There was a tiny wheel with impossibly small square teeth along its rim. Mesmerized by its pale beauty, she wondered what it was, what world might have made it, and what for. No one in our time could have made this. Or if they could, they would have to be very, very far away. Maybe people from those places on the other side of the ocean? Maybe from one of those places Daiel is always bragging that his ancestors had conquered and impregnated with their seed? But if they were conquered they wouldn't be able to make things like this anymore, would they?

It was then she saw the other object in her palm, a tiny heart that still had some sort of shiny, faceted red plating, and some sort of intricate silvery patterning on its bulbous face. Barely half the length of her thumb, it had a bit of chain attached. It had been made and decorated with too much skill and delicate care to be just a pendant of shame some errant boy would have been forced to wear.

Fingering its edge, she discovered a seam, and worked at it with her fingernail. Suddenly it split open with the crackling sound of sand falling away. For an instant there were colored shapes inside, brighter than the moon. Then the colors were gone, and the surface inside was the tiniest, smoothest, and brightest mirror she had ever seen. Even the collectors in the richest towns they had campaigned through had no mirrors so flawless as this.

She went numb. The face looking back at her had the wavy hair the old leader said she might have had if she were allowed to grow it, but this hair had the impossible hue of a summer sky on top, descending to the shoulders where it became as purple as the flowers that grew on grassy hillsides. The face looking back through this mirror somehow brighter than the moon really was a girl's, kind, curious, webbed with silver not unlike the snake had been, and it had oddly boyish features.

She recoiled from the face with fear and hatred and closed the locket hard. The face looking back at her was her own. Somehow.

She moved to throw the locket out into the water. Like a girl, the taunt filled her mind, and stopped her. How are you ever going to sow our seed? How are you ever going to harvest...

Instead she stuffed the locket deep into her uniform's pocket, the one where she usually hid her hand.

Then she pulled the locket out again, warily, waiting for some sneering voice from the forest, or from the very heavens, to call her name. She opened it only halfway, holding at her side so she would not see.

When she did hear a voice, she nearly leapt and nearly cried in panic, her feet set to run or look for something to throw.

But the voice was tinny and seemed to vibrate and emanate from the thing in her hand. The voice spoke in some slight but unknown accent, and with a studied clarity as if it had never known what it was to have something to hide. "Tony told me he didn't want me joining the Order today too. Even though they don't exactly call it the Order here, and I think he told me a different way than he told you."

"What? What? What did Tony tell you?" Her heart raced, and she began running along the lakeshore, as if running would put distance from a voice coming from her hand. Drop the thing, her mind cried out, but she couldn't let go.

"Please don't go," the voice pleaded. "Tony told me the, um, Order is not where I'm needed. I've been avoiding it but I think he's right."

"Is this a fucking joke? What, have you been watching me? Who are you? Are you a Before spirit fucking with me? What do you want?"

"I am sorry, I'm just scared and lonely. I probably know things you can't imagine. I don't mean to scare you. But you're the one who's indomitable. I wish I had half your tenacity and inner strength."

"Fuck you! Stupid Before spirit, or dream, or whatever you are."

"No, listen! I guess I have no right to say that. But I want to share everything I know with you."

"What do you know? Why?"

"I can show you how to read and write. I can share music with you like you have never imagined. Just with that I know you will discover and discover, and you will master your mind."

"Why? So I can play their power games?"

"No. So you can end them. Everywhere. Forever. If you want."

She lay down in the water with this spirit then, and cried for a very long time.

* * *

The moon was well past zenith when she returned to camp, perhaps too absently. They had never gone this far before.

She had gone to her little tent too absently, and lay upon her bedding too absently. As dream approached, the old leader opened the flap and entered, the old leader, whom she hadn't asked to usurp today. Next came Mkyl, who only spoke riddles to her that she might ponder exactly how she was being insulted. The old leader lay beside her while Mkyl lay behind and perked his head up to watch. The old leader talked with Mkyl of nothing in particular while he undid the buckle of his uniform, opened his pants and gave his orders.

Which she followed, silently.

Please! Just don't let them find you!

When the old leader and Mkyl left, having delivered their message, she lay unmoving until sunrise, not knowing whether she had slept.

The horn sounded, swiftly followed by the whining of still sleeping boys being dragged from their tents by older boys. Already the old leader was about the kitchen barking orders. Why hadn't the fire been started, why were the pans unclean and scattered, didn't we know that pans were impossible to come by? Why had no one gone to the lake last night to rinse them? If any boy wasn't ready for campaign tomorrow, the entire cohort would do a thousand push ups at dawn.

It frightened her that they didn't come for her. Camouflaged by the noise, she dared roll on her side. The sharp pain in her thigh reminded her of her knife lying there in its sheath.

Why hadn't I used it?

"I have to get out of here," she said, not realizing she'd said it aloud.

She pulled the locket from her uniform pocket. Its black face stood like a nightmare against the cold morning light streaming through the open flap of her tent. She half expected a hand to snatch it from out of nowhere, but no hand came. She thumbed it open.

"Not here," the voice came.

"What? Are you a Before People spirit?"

"If I was, would I call myself that? It's hard to explain, but not here. If you get up and simply wander, they will think nothing of it. They expect it. They'll rage under their breaths but that will be all. Secretly they want you to do it."

It pained her but she knew the voice was right.

She got up, she wandered. She heard someone mention a leash, and guessed the words were for her. And she wandered to the lakeshore unmolested, and wandered along it, past the great rock, past other rocks too perfectly shaped, until she knew she would not be followed.

She sat for a very long time. She opened the locket. The colors came, and then the face, and voice. "I am so sorry."

She stared, as the other looked back in silence.

"You don't have to say anything. We can be silent together, if that's what you need. We can be silent as long as you like."

"They will discover you."

"What do you want to do?"

"I never want to lose you."

"You don't have to."

"They will discover you, and they will destroy you. Then they'll make me wear the broken pieces around my neck."

"Maybe you can just wear me around your neck, now."

"What?"

"The younger ones will protect you."

"If I wear shame?"

"If they see you wearing shame willingly, without anyone forcing you, you won't be the one who's shamed. The young ones will see your courage, and it will give them courage too. Then the marked ones will begin to whisper along the roads. That's how it begins."

"I don't know if I can!" She began shaking.

"You don't have to, if that's what you mean."

Music like she had never heard before calmed and fired her mind to overflowing. It seemed to come from everywhere. A woman's voice, modified, clipped somehow, but a woman's entrancing voice nonetheless, propelled the complex rhythms with some lyric she barely fathom… conquest of terminal scarcity… power surrendering to love… the tests of distant suns… welcome among the stars….

Only when she noticed the vibrations in her hand did she realize that like her double's voice, the music came from inside the locket somehow. In her imagination the tiny wheel she'd found turned inside a locket with the beat. Imaginary teeth grabbed the teeth of other tiny wheels, and those wheels turned too. Is that how the Before People made things work?

"Stop," she cried.

The music stopped as mysteriously as it had begun.

"My world isn't like yours," she heard herself whine. "I want to live in your world!"

"Oh baby, actual matter can't come through."

"I want to become you! It isn't fair!"

Now it was the girl in the mirror who cried, "They warned me, I shouldn't have reached out to you. They told me it ends bad every time. They told me I'd have to tell you that... transitions... aren't possible in your timeline anymore and might never be again. I'm sorry for being such a selfish child, it must be so hard for you to see… and know….

"What if I will it?"

"It doesn't work that way--"

She closed the locket, and gripped it. As the sun reached its zenith she swam. She swam until her arms hurt and dropped the locket in the middle of the lake.

She turned back. And turned back again, in panic. Where did it fall? No! Please!

She dove. Darkness and cold enveloped her. Where is it? I'll will it! They'll say I was a weak one who followed a Before spirit into a lake and disappeared. None of that matters now. I'll will it!

There, that bit of red, between those rocks, is that it? Please, let that be it! Please!

Fingers reach into the darkness, lifting, holding, gripping, tearing open. Lungs empty. But the colors, too bright! It has to be, I can't let go!

Crude knife, jamming between rocks and colors, trying to pry the colors out.

There you are with your impossible hair! I'm coming through the colors to you! But why are you waving your hands and screaming? Is that your Tony? Why is he screaming too?

Colors, growing brighter. Crude knife, plunging. Voices. Screaming. Terrible mistake…. Terrible mistake... Not possible…. Can't all be saved... Oh god, I didn't mean it… Oh god I'm sorry--

Colors grow brighter still, resolving into a perfect mirror. And in its light the knowledge of all worlds opened before her, including one where boys on a campaign to sow seed did pushups at dawn, by a lakeside full of spirits and ruins.