Broken Places

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. That’s the truth.

Dola says that there weren’t always people in the valley either, and that maybe the dragons have a better claim on the place than we do. But then, Dola is old and crotchety, and a lot of folks think she’s half-mad anyway, and what does she know?

But I like Dola, whatever the others say. She has always been nice to me, it never mattered to her about the markings on my face, and there’s not many people I can say that about.

Daddy always said not to mind people staring, that times have been tough, that the years before I was born were years filled with tears and hardship. And that was so even before the dragons came, and has just got worse since. And so, of course people are suspicious. Of course they are wary about the markings. And that’s…well, it’s not fair, but I understand it. I got used to the way people look at me. I got used to that from when I was really little. I don’t mind the looks.

“Leave them alone, and they’ll leave us alone,” is what most people say. About the dragons, I mean. Which sounds nice enough, and it might even be true a lot of the time.

But then, there are times like what happened last Starday.

Daddy says we need days like Starday, and not just to remind us where we came from. But to remind us about where we are going. About who we really are.

They came on Starday. They came again, and we nearly didn’t notice they were coming, and that time it could have been really bad. Luckily the bells started ringing - everyone thought the bells had been a bit of a joke, they had only laughed and rolled their eye when Sara had laid them.

But they worked. They really did.

And that was the only reason we knew the dragons were coming, and we had just enough time to get to the caves. No-one died this time. That was good. Really good. It didn’t matter so much, the mess they made of the fields. The cinder, the ash. After all, it’s not like we absolutely need the fields for food. We can get most of what we need from the caves, from the old machines under the caves. Still, it was horrible. To see what the fields looked like afterwards. To see all the hard work people had put into getting the celebrations ready, to see the tattered shreds of what remained. And the animals, of course. That wasn’t nice. The kids were sad about that. The little kids, I mean. I’ve seen worse. A lot worse.

Some people still said that it was just bad luck. Coincidence.

Others said someone must have provoked them. They looked at daddy when they said that. Some of them did. And some looked at Sara. I don’t like those looks. Or those people.

Then there are people like Crank. I don’t like Crank, either. I’m not sure who really does like him. I mean, who could like someone like that? He’s so wiry and mean. He’s so nasty, and to everyone, not just to the people who talk against him. Sometimes I think he’s nastier to the people who follow him, to the people who listen to him and who want him to run for mayor next year. He says he won’t run, though. He says the whole system is a joke, and why would he want to be mayor of a joke system? Daddy says not to worry about what Crank says, but I can see in his eyes that he’s worried. So that’s another not-good-thing.

Anyway, Crank says that the dragons that came on Starday weren’t random. He says that they knew. That’s a creepy thought: dragons that know. They are so huge, such vast creatures. They are so big they blot out the suns. They look peaceful, when they are coasting through the sky, far, far away. Hunting in the desert, or doing whatever it is they are doing in the old, broken places. The places we don’t go. The places where it is dangerous for us to go. No, not just dangerous: strange. Because strange things happen in those broken places. Even on the days when there are no dragons in the skies, people don’t like going to the old places. Even daddy. He used to go, but not anymore. I want to see what’s out there, I keep asking him to take me. He always says no, but I don’t mind. Maybe one day, one day he will change his mind. One day he will say, Why, yes Aurora, I think today we shall go there. You’re old enough now. And yes, there are so many questions still…

So I keep asking.

One day he might agree.

I don’t see how dragons can know. Know enough about us to attack us on our special day, I mean. How can they? They are so fierce, so strange. So wild. And, sure - of course they are clever. Clever enough to be amazing hunters. And not just for food. For fun. They hunt mountain lions up in the steppes. That’s what Dola told me. She says she saw it, saw it with her own eyes when she was as old as my daddy is now. She says she lived out on the steppes, lived there for more than a year. Which is a very odd thing to do, but that’s something that everyone seems to agree she did, at least. She didn’t always live in the valley. Or rather, she was born here. Of course she was. Where else could she have been born? Humans don’t have any other homes in this world. Our only home is the Valley. That’s why it’s so awful. The dragons, I mean. If we had some other home, somewhere else to go, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. We could just…well, go somewhere else.

But there is nowhere else. Not where we could all live. Not where we could move the stuff that’s in the caves. Where else could there possibly be? Nowhere in this world, and that’s the truth. Not that we could move the machines. No-one understands them well enough to move them. Daddy says we used to understand them, of course. Dola agrees with him. They both say things were very different, once upon a time. We were great when we came here. That’s what they say. We were great, but a lot of time has passed, and we have diminished. That means we’ve got dimmer, I think. Or sometimes I think maybe that means the whole world has got dimmer. When the suns are both up, it’s very bright. It’s normal, I mean. But there does seem to be more twilight now. Even since when I was a little kid. Some days, the suns don’t crawl much above the horizon. On those days, the dust on the ground looks red - like blood - and the mountains to the West are just grey shadows. And the old places…well, no-one even looks in that direction. Not on those days. Not even me. I don’t like the old places, then. The wind from that way tastes…funny. Not right. I wouldn’t go there on a twilight day, not even if daddy said today was the day, that we could go exploring all day. If he said that on a twilight day, I would go away. I would hide. I really would.

Anyway.

<Later>

I don’t know why he makes me keep this stupid journal. He never looks at it. I wish he would. I tried to show him just now, but he shouted at me. He said there’s no time, and how can he be expected to read my scribblings when he’s responsible for so much else? I don’t like it when he shouts at me.

But I cried then - that’s why this paper is wet and why some of the ink is blotched - I tried not to, because I know he’s right, I know he’s trying to make things work, to keep the machines from failing, to keep us all alive. I know all that, and I wish I could stop myself from asking stupid things, like asking him to read what I had written. But I couldn’t stop myself, and then he shouted. And I know he doesn’t have the time to read it, even though it was daddy who asked me to keep writing things down.

I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t ask him that again. I won’t. I

<Later>

Something bad happened. Another bad thing. Daddy just came back and told me. That was why he was so mad and shouted at me. He didn’t want to tell me the bad thing that happened, but he said now he shouted at me, it wasn’t fair, that I mustn’t think it was my fault.

That’s one thing I love about him. Daddy will own up when he made a mistake. He will always say sorry if he has done something bad to me.

One of the machines is on fire. Daddy says they’ve been trying all day to make it stop, but they can’t. The machines are so big, and they run so hot, and the water that was meant to be running beneath the machine had dried up, and for some reason no-one had noticed. And that is so bad, because if the fire spreads to the other machines…

Daddy stopped speaking the words then, but it didn’t matter because I know very well what would happen if the fire spread to the other machines. So we were both just quiet for a while, and then I asked what would happen now, and he made his long face and said that they had sealed the machine off, and that they were diverting water from elsewhere and that that should hold it, and it was all they could do, anyway.

I thought of it then, thought of all those miles and miles of rock and concrete and metal. How could anyone have made machines that big? It makes me feel a little crazy just to think about it. How could they have made them? How could they have moved them? I don’t know. I guess no-one knows.

And I thought of all those miles of passageways getting closed off, and that made me start crying, because I suddenly thought, what if someone had still been down there? What if someone had been stuck down there when they closed the machine off? What would happen to them, trapped and alone under all those endless tonnes of metal and stone and plasteel?

But daddy hugged me and he said, no, no one was left down there. They were sure. They checked and double checked. They have protocols for things like that, and they even test them and do dummy-runs, so everyone knew what to do.

Still, it was bad. Nothing like this has happened before. Not as far back as the records go. And there’s going to be an emergency meeting about it tonight, and the whole of the valley will be there. Daddy says I should go, that I’m a part of the community and that I don’t just have a right to be there, that I have an obligation.

But I don’t want to go. I know what it will be like. I know the way people will look. And the worse things get, the worse the people get, too.

I don’t like to think about what they will say. About what they might do.

But I’m going to go.

I’ve got to get ready now, but I’ll write more when we get back.

<Later>

It was horrible.

The most horrible day I can remember since I was a little kid. I just want to close my eyes, to block it all out and not remember and go to sleep. But I know sleep won’t come, not now. Not after that. So I’m going to write it all down. I’m going to try to remember everything I can, to try and get it right.

By the time we got to the town hall, only Aster was still shining, just above the horizon. Yin has hardly risen today anyway, and the only light was red-stained and leaking upwards from behind the mountains. The shadows were long, touching the edge of First Cave, and the only lights inside were dim and flickery, the way they get when the machines are over stressed or not working properly. Which is probably because of the fire, but that can’t have helped, because by the time we got outside the hall, we could hear the shouting from within. I couldn’t hear voices then, nor words, just a horrible angry noise, like someone had turned over a hornet’s nest.

I wanted to run, but daddy must have known because he laid one of his big, hard hands gently on the small of my back.

I kept my eyes down when we walked in, which is what I always do when I go anywhere with other people, because I don’t want to see the way they stare at me. But this time, I could tell they were really worked up because there was no lulling in the voices when we came in. I don’t think anyone even noticed me, and I would have been glad of that if I hadn’t known it was such a bad sign.

Chairs were set up in a rough circle, with the raised platform in the middle, and on the platform was Mayor Jones and a couple of the other engineers, and a tall, hard-looking woman that looked vaguely familiar, but who I didn’t quite recognise. Everyone was angry, Mayor Jones was trying to answer some question that had been asked, but several other people were talking over him. Crank wasn’t saying anything, but I could see his thin, wiry body and his stubbly chin glinting in the dim electric lights, and I could just see at a glance that he had murder in his eyes. And triumph. He looked happy, somehow, mixed in with the angry, as if he had finally caught Mayor Jones out, and this was his moment.

Crank wasn’t saying anything, but it was his friends, his followers who were doing most of the angry shouting. As daddy and I wound our way into the hall, the two engineers both noticed and looked relieved. I wanted to stay back here, back in the darkness, but Daddy was pushing forward thorough the throng, and he had hold of my hand, and I could tell he wanted me to come with him. He hates that I’m so afraid of being seen. He doesn’t think I should let me fear get hold of me like that, so he made me come forward with him.

“Ah, here’s our chief engineer,” said Mayor Jones, catching sight of daddy at last, and holding out a hand to indicate him, so that everyone suddenly noticed us and turned to stare.

At once, the whole room went quiet. My face was suddenly on fire, as I felt everyone looking at us. I hated my daddy then, just a little bit, hated him for pulling us forward, for pulling me forward with him, because I could tell without even looking up that he was pulling us deeper into a bad situation. But I was proud of him too, because he was doing exactly what he was telling me I needed to: he knew that the crowd were against him, and I could tell from the stiffness in his shoulders that his skin was crawling, too.

There was a muttering from Crank’s corner of the room, but most people stayed quiet now. They might not have liked daddy much, but they were a bit afraid of him, the way folk are just a little afraid of all the engineers. I guess that’s to do with not understanding what it is they do, and yet needing them so much. Without the machines, we would never be able to support ourselves. The dragons are one thing, but even without the dragons this world is hostile, dangerous. Times have been tough, as I said. The machines give us so much of what we need, not least keeping the caves safe. And now…

“Mathias,” said Mayor Jones, standing forward and reaching out a hand. “Come, come sit up here. Come up here and tell folks…”

But he had no words to come after that, and just trailed off, and the muttering grew louder again. I could see the sweat beading on Mayor Jones’ chubby, clean-shaved face. He pulled a kerchief from one pocket and mopped his brow. Behind him, one of the two engineers - it was Sara, the same Sara who laid the bells that warned us of the dragons on Starday - gave me a smile. And for a small moment I felt better, because I know Sara a little bit, she has even been to our house, and she didn’t treat me any different on account of the marking on my face. But then my eyes drifted to the tall, mean-looking woman, the one who I only vaguely recognised, and then I felt sick. She was looking at me - looking straight at me, and there was such disgust there, such mistrust that I wanted to just faint right away, for the earth or sleep to swallow me up.

But daddy was squeezing my hand then, pushing me towards a chair at the front, and there was a scramble as the people sitting nearby rushed to move out of my way. To give me space, so that they didn’t have to be near me. Then daddy was mounting the raised platform, taking his battered cap off his head and squeezing it between his thumb and fingers.

“Hello, all,” he said, but his voice was small in the echoing hall, and the words seemed to be swallowed up by the waiting crowd, and there was more muttering from the back.

“Hello,” Crank said now, but it was a small, mean sort of greeting, and there was a scattering of nasty laughter from the people around him.

“Hello,” daddy said again, louder now, the faintest touch of anger in his voice, giving Crank a glare. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

Everyone was silent now. Even Crank and his people wanted to hear what daddy had to say.

“Guess you’ve heard by now,” said daddy. “No point dressing it up.”

“No shit, Shetlock,” someone from the back called, but there was no laughter.

“One of the machines is on fire,” daddy went on. “Been fighting it all day. We think we’ve got it contained now. Shouldn’t spread, but it was close for a while.”

That got a mixed reaction. A lot of people seemed heartened by this, to take some confidence from daddy’s own confidence that things had been gotten under some control. But there were others - and not all of them near Crank - who started muttering again.

I caught something about how it shouldn’t have been let to catch fire in the first place, and the word fault seemed to ring out more than once.

Daddy raised a hand, and the crowd quieted again.

“It shouldn’t spread,” he repeated. “But things are going to be difficult for a while.”

More muttering. It sounded nastier now.

“They’re already difficult!” Someone shouted.

“How much worse?” Someone else demanded.

“We’ve had to shut off a couple of the adjacent machines,” daddy went on. “That means less power. For a while,” he said again.

As if to emphasise this, the shoddy lighting in the hall dimmed a moment, flickered, came back on.

“How long?” Said a fat woman who sat next to Crank.

“Long as it takes,” said daddy. He didn’t say it loud, but there was a coldness in his voice, so that he sounded hard and a little mean himself, and with that the muttering got louder than ever.

Daddy tried raising his hand again, but this time it didn’t work. He was losing them, I could tell.

Then Crank stood slowly, and a wave of silence rippled out from him. He looked at daddy for a long moment, as if measuring him.

“Which machine?” He said.

Everyone went very still, all eyes swivelling to daddy.

Daddy didn’t flinch, but I could see his neck move, and there was a new tightness in his jaw, in the way he stood.

“Oak,” said daddy, and though he had only paused a moment, that was enough somehow, enough that I knew it had been a mistake, almost an admission of guilt.

A scattering of curses rose up now, but Crank’s voice rose louder, riding over them.

“That so?” He said. “That’s the one, ain’t it, Mathias? The one you’ve been…meddling with. That’s right, ain’t it?”

There were cries of, It is, it is! And He caused it! It was his fault!

But Crank lifted a finger, stilling the crowd with it, then levelling it to point at daddy, like it were a pistol.

“That is right, Mathias?” He asked, a soft drawl. “Oak. That is the one you’ve been…”

“I’ve been fixing,” said daddy, and he was unable to keep the note of defiance from his voice, and again I knew this was a mistake. “It’s not been working well. Not for five years or more. You know that. We all…”

But the roar of the crowd cut him off, and suddenly I was aware that Crank wasn’t the only one standing now. Several of the men around him were standing too, the fat woman too, and they were all glaring at daddy, pointing, shouting things. Sara saw this, and she was tugging at father’s sleeve, trying to say something to him, but he wasn’t listening to her, he was past listening to any good sense, I could see that.

“Oh, you’ve been fixing it, have you?” Said Crank, and the moment he started speaking, everyone went quiet again, and his words echoed around the hall. “Seems like that’s what you’ve been doing. And now,” he said, raising his voice and turning to look around, taking in everyone, “now that our Chief Engineer here has had fun fixing things, it’s us that needs to clear up the mess!”

There was cheers at this, cheers and shouts and boos, but I could tell everyone was against daddy, or so close to everyone that it made no odds.

I got to my feet then, too, tried to press forward. But suddenly there was a pain in my shin, and then I was falling forward, the stone floor coming up to meet me. There was a flash of pain in my face and I tasted blood.

Then it felt like the whole room exploded around me. I could feel the footsteps thudding through the ground as people moved. I tried to get up but there was someone on top of me, something pushing me down. There was screaming, and many voices shouting. And through it all I could hear my father’s voice, could hear him screaming something, and I thought it was my name but I couldn’t be sure, and then it cut off abruptly, replaced by a horrible chocking, spluttering noise.

I tried to get up again, but this time the weight on my back bit down into me, and I realised someone was kicking me, kicking me hard. But as I sprawled forward, someone else was grabbing my hand, and for a moment I thought they were going to hurt me, too, but then I recognised Dola’s old face, though it didn’t look kind now, it looked furious. She heaved me forward, and there was more strength in her old body than I would have guessed because somehow she had me on my feet, and was standing in front of me, shouting up at someone, someone I couldn’t see.

There were bodies moving all around me, and though there was less shouting, there was an endless heavy breathing, a horrible laboured noise that seemed to be coming from everywhere and everyone, and then there was another gasping noise, and it was my daddy, and something was happening to him, something awful and…

There was a bang so loud I felt like I had been slapped.

A gunshot.

I recognised it for what it must have been, not that I have heard many of them. There aren’t many guns around, and those that are, are seldom used.

Everyone was silent. The air itself seemed to have frozen.

All I could hear was the hammering of my heart, and all I could feel was a desperate, aching need to find my daddy. To get to him. To help him.

Dola had drawn me to one side, away from the tightest press of bodies. There were several large backs between me and the raised stage now, but I surged forward, pushing at them, not caring for once how they might stare. For a wonder, they moved aside, giving me a view of the stage.

And there he was.

My daddy.

He was on the floor, spread out, loose-limbed, and with a pool of blood oozing from his head. He was breathing. I could see his chest rising and falling in wild, ragged gasps.

A chair was just being lifted from his neck.

Holding the chair, raising it slowly, scowls of hate on their faces, two of Crank’s followers were glaring.

Not glaring at my daddy, though. Not glaring at the man they had nearly killed.

No, they were glaring at the tall, hard-looking woman.

The woman who had fired her large, dark revolver, and who now had it levelled at the both of them.

“Throw the chair,” she said. She didn’t shout. She didn’t need to.

They lifted the chair, hurled it clear. It clattered away.

“On the floor,” she said, advancing a step, gesturing with the gun.

The two men looked like they wanted to say something, but neither dared. They crept backwards, went to the floor where the tall woman indicated.

“All of you,” she said, raising her voice. “Back. Get back.”

Crank was staring at her, his top lip twitching. He looked like he was on the verge of challenging her, but then whatever equation was flashing through his brain, he changed his mind.

“You heard her,” he yelled, looking over his shoulder. “Back. Give our chief engineer some room.”

There was a moment where things seemed to hang in the balance, and then, just like that the tension melted out of the room. It was like a madness had gotten hold, and just as quick had passed on, leaving only coldness and chaos in its wake.

I could hear sobbing now, a few moans of pain. But the angry muttering had gone, and no-one was shouting anymore.

I ran forward, threw myself down next to him. He was sitting up now, coughing so hard his face was bright red. Blood was seeping from a cut in his forehead, to which Sara was pressing a cloth.

I wrapped my arms around him, hugged him close. I could smell the sweat and fear. My heart was still hammering in my chest, but my breathing was coming more evenly now. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Things had been sour before, and Crank had been making all sorts of trouble, but this…

Daddy hugged me back. His coughing died down, and he opened his eyes fully, looking around, taking it all in.

“They tried to kill me,” he said.

It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t sound angry. Puzzled almost.

I nodded, but it was the tall, hard-faced woman who answered.

“They did,” she said, and though her gun was lower now, it wasn’t in its holster and her eyes were still glaring down at the two men on the floor.

“Would have killed me,” he said again, and I saw his eyes go to the chair that they had been using to bear down on him, to crush his neck so he couldn’t breath.

“Would have,” the woman confirmed. She raised her voice. “We all saw it.”

There was muttering again, but it somehow seemed that all the anger had gone out of the crowd now.

The two men on the floor said nothing. They knew. One of them glanced up, but not at daddy, and not at the hard-faced woman. Instead, he looked at Crank.

Crank nodded at him. He looked kind of thoughtful then, like he was contemplating a conversation about what to have for dinner, or what the weather might hold tomorrow.

“We did,” he agreed, and his voice was pitched loud, so that everyone could hear what he had to say, too. “All saw them lay about our fine chief engineer, here. Saw you pull that iron, too,” he went on, looking hard at the tall woman. “Mighty lucky you had it on you. Who knows how things would have gone otherwise.”

The unspoken accusations hung in the air.

We weren’t meant to bring weapons. Not to the town hall. Not even around the caves. There was no law. There had never needed to be a law. It just wasn’t done.

Who was she? I suddenly wondered. The valley is a big enough place that there were always people you didn’t know. There are all sorts of farms and outlying dwellings, deep in the cave systems stretching beneath the Valley; there are people who only turn up once in a blue moon, others who never turn up at all until they turn up dead, found and unlooked for. Still, the tall woman was familiar. I had seen her before. I was sure of it.

And she had been standing up on the raised platform when we arrived, not milling about in the dark of the room like so many others.

And she had had a gun.

And she had drawn it.

“Right,” said the tall woman, and then she went silent, but she was looking at Crank, looking at him hard and cold, and I could see he didn’t like that one bit.

Crank stared back, but then - to his shame - he dropped his eye. That made him mad as all hell again, and he burst out suddenly.

“What are you doing back here, Soames?” He demanded. “Thought you was too good for boring folks like us. Thought only the wide world was interesting enough to hold your fancy.”

Soams.

The name was familiar, too.

I had seen her, but not for a long time. Not since I was a little kid, maybe.

Soams shrugged her wiry shoulders. She smiled, but it didn’t touch her mouth.

“Seems to have got mighty interesting without me,” she replied.

Crank scowled at that, but looked away, hid the expression. He tapped his nose, as if remembering something.

“Oh, yes,” he said with a nasty smile. “You went to hunt something. What was it now? Buffalo? Lion?”

She tilted her head.

“You know it weren’t,” she said softly.

“Right, right,” Crank replied. He was enjoying this now. He thought he had something on her, something to make her look cheap, or a coward. Something.

“Dragons,” said Dola crisply. She held her head high as she looked around the room, daring anyone to disagree, daring anyone to laugh at her.

“Dragons!” Said Crank, slapping his forehead. “‘Course it was. Dragons. Tell me,” he added, ignoring Dola, and leaning forward and staring at Soams. “How’s the dragon-hunting going? Going well, is it?”

There was a general upwelling of laughter at this, and I felt myself cringe. I liked Soams now, I would have liked her just for the way she was standing up to Crank, and no matter that she had just saved my daddy. But this was a point against her. More than a point. Crank might as well have called her a fool and a madwoman and have done with it. No-one who said they were going to hunt dragons was in their right mind. It was a crazy thing to try, and everyone knew it.

But when I looked at Soams, she did not look shamed. She didn’t even look rattled.

Instead she tilted her head again, looking not at Crank, but around all of us, at the whole room.

She paused, waiting for the laughter to die away.

And then, “I got one,” she said.

To be continued...

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