The Damascene Heart

Mari couldn’t remember actually deciding to leave the city.

Maybe the decision was made in her dreams one night, or in the dawn hour between sleep and waking. Or maybe it was made as she walked home one night, touching the pepper spray in her belt, listening to the violence that always seemed to be just one block over, and knowing that her elected officials cared only for money and power and little for the citizens they supposedly represented.

Regardless, one day she woke up knowing she was going to leave.

So she started to make preparations.

She had to be careful. Everything she purchased, every site she visited, was tracked into a database somewhere. The wrong entries would invite questions by authorities. She purchased supplies piecemeal--a backpack here, camping food there--and started hoarding cash a little at a time.

Planning her journey was harder. She couldn’t just search for routes up the coast, especially up to the border. So she hauled the old dusty encyclopedias from her parents’ basement and looked at the paper maps, state by state, trying to commit them to memory, not knowing how accurate they could still be.

She had to at least try to convince her parents to come with her.

“Why should we go anywhere?” her mother said. “That violence is all city stuff. We’re perfectly safe here in the suburbs.”

“Mom, you know the Johnsons’ house was vandalized last week.”

“The Johnsons! They live in that big old ostentatious house. Rioters don’t target simple folk like us.”

“And Mrs. Carlson, attacked on her way home from work? Ended up in the hospital for a week? She’s lucky to be alive.”

Mom sniffed. “Retaliation. She should never have gone to those demonstrations. Serves her right for getting all involved in politics. No, honey. We just have to keep our heads down and live our lives. I don’t see what you’re all worried for.”

The same conversation, every week when she visited. Each conversation was a variation on a theme, and it always ended the same way.

Mari never gave up hope, but she moved forward with her preparations.

She packed and repacked over the course of several weeks. She would be on foot--gasoline was only for those rich enough to afford it and defend it, in their walled enclaves--so she had to carry everything. Basic supplies, foodstuffs, items for trade or barter...everything was weighed for its usefulness and the space it took.

Finally she opened her jewelry box for the last time.

She had sold most of the valuable pieces over the past year; cash was lighter to carry. Of what little remained, one piece stood out.

She lifted Gran’s locket, the Damascene heart, with the elegant swirls of gold etched into the black base. It had been Gran’s greatest treasure, brought over from Toledo, a picture of Gran as a young beauty nestled securely inside.

She couldn’t bear to sell it, but wearing it on the road would just invite theft. She should just leave it behind, but she couldn’t bear the thought of some looter somewhere taking it, using it, discarding it. She fastened it around her neck.

She’d sleep with it tonight, and tomorrow she would decide what to do with it.

It was not safe for a young female to travel alone for long. Even on the back roads, away from the coast, danger would be a constant presence. She would have to find a larger group of pilgrims and try to buy her way in as soon as possible. But first things first.

In the middle of the night she woke up to the smell of smoke and looked outside to see a mob with flamethrowers advancing through her neighborhood, right outside her yard. The riot had one goal--destruction--and everything in their path was burned without thought or remorse.

Heart pounding, Mari grabbed her pack and ran out the back door.

And kept running.

Near dawn, she was able to sleep briefly in the crawlspace under an abandoned house, the smell of smoke still singeing her nostrils. She woke a few hours later and allowed herself ten minutes to cry, grieving for what was lost.

And then she set out, determined, heading north.

~ ~ ~

“Mr. Coryn? I’m Zadie Sell. From the University. Thanks for calling us.”

The dusty farmer gave Zadie’s hand a firm shake. “Thanks for coming out, Dr. Sell.”

“Oh, I’m not a doctor yet. Just a grad student, but I can make an initial assessment. Can you show me what you’ve found?”

He guided her through the half-broken field. Civilization was encroaching on this wilderness--reclaiming it, the government said--year by year. Zadie was certain that many dusty farmers found bones in dusty fields. She was only surprised that this one had contacted them.

She crouched down next to the half-buried skeleton, surveyed the surrounding land, and got to work.

Some hours later, she had uncovered enough to make an elated guess. The apparent age, the scraps of fabric, but most of all the jewelry pointed in one direction.

“This appears to be a late pre-Cataclysm burial,” she told Coryn, cautiously hiding her excitement. “And do you see the way the ground dips and rolls, there and there? I would bet there are more burials here as well. I’ll take soil samples and some artifacts back to the lab to be sure, but you seem to have found a significant burial mound.”

“Just doing my civic duty,” he replied, but she could see the conflict in his face. He just wanted, just needed, to break ground and plant his crop so he could feed his family.

“Don’t worry,” she replied with a smile. “If this turns out to be what I think it is, we can secure some grant money to compensate you while the dig is underway.”

His face visibly brightened as Zadie collected her tools. She shook his dusty hand again on her way out.

“Thanks again, Mr. Coryn. We’ll be in touch.”

~ ~ ~

“Have you even thought about what you’re going to do when we get--”

Jason’s words were drowned out by the scream of fighter jets slicing the sky far above them.

Mari poked at the dying fire, scattering the embers as the rest of the band settled down for the night. The jets had become more and more frequent the farther north they went, no doubt going to and from the military base near the border. She barely noticed them anymore.

She touched her neck, where Gran’s locket lay nestled safely under her shirt. Gran had fled poverty and terrorism too, coming here to start a new life.

How ironic that her granddaughter now fled the promised land for the same reason.

“I worked as a phlebotomist,” Mari replied, “and I was putting myself through nursing school.”

Jason nodded. “You’re in, then. People will always need doctors and nurses.”

“That’s my hope. How about you?”

He shrugged. “I’m strong, and I’m handy with tools. Maybe I can get a job as a fix-it man.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Yeah. The thing is, I don’t really care. Even if I’m grunt labor, I’d be happy doing that. Just as long as I can live in a place that’s not at war with itself, or anybody else. That’s my hope.”

Later that night, after the camp had gone to sleep, she crept, for the first time, over to Jason’s bag and crawled in with him, both of them holding onto dreams in the night.

~ ~ ~

Zadie was overseeing the site when Derrick brought her the news.

Their team had uncovered over a dozen burials in remarkably short order, each one painstakingly catalogued, and each one lending more evidence to Zadie’s earlier conviction.

This was late pre-Cataclysm society.

Of course, that was the official name, but Zadie had to secretly laugh. Every human society eventually had a cataclysm. Drought, famine, earthquake, floods. War. Every society ultimately ended, and few of them did so peacefully.

This society, though, had left a black hole in the history record. They knew so little about this period, this people.

Derrick was out of breath as he ran up to her, waving a folder.

“What’s this?”

“Soil analysis report,” he panted.

She frowned as she flipped through the pages. “This makes no sense. The lab equipment’s malfunctioning.”

“Yeah, I thought so too. So I ran controls and re-ran the samples. Same results.”

“Somebody contaminated their samples.”

“These are the samples you collected. These results are valid.”

“But that makes no sense,” she repeated. “The only way we would see these levels is if…”

She looked up, struck by the same thunderbolt that had put such feverish excitement into Derrick’s face.

“These aren’t pre-Cataclysm burials,” she whispered.

Derrick nodded vigorously, eyes bright.

“These people died at the moment of impact.”

~ ~ ~

They were less than a mile from the border when the bandits ambushed them.

Their group was armed, of course, but Mari could see immediately that the situation was hopeless. The outlaws had better numbers and better weapons.

And they were not taking prisoners.

She grabbed Jason’s hand and started to run, only to find they were surrounded.

He pulled her to him as jets howled above them, and kissed her as they clung desperately to each other, waiting for the bullets’ deadly bite.

Instead there was a clap of soundless thunder and a wash of heat, and she had a split second of eternity to look into his eyes and see a lifetime of dreams together--

The world turned white.

~ ~ ~

Zadie picked her way among the excavation sites, watching as her students carefully uncovered the details of each skeleton’s last moments.

The burials had been given unofficial names as specifics became clear. The Packhorse, a giant of a man who was carrying a giant bag of supplies. The Maiden, who was estimated to have been about sixteen when she died. The Warrior, who was clutching the remains of his primitive projectile weapon.

Had they known what was coming? Zadie wondered. They were arranged in roughly two concentric circles, an inner group surrounded by an outer group. Had they been participating in some sort of ceremony?

She had almost missed excavating the resting site of the Lovers.

It was easy to forget, a professor had told her early in her academic career, that each of these skeletons had once been a person with their own story, their own hopes and fears and dreams.

What’s your story? Zadie asked, looking down onto the two skeletons, entwined in eternity, arms and hands enmeshed, and a black-and-gold heart pendant nestled between them.