The Reaching Well

Emer didn't answer when Devon knocked.

“Is it the end, this time?” she says. She eyed the glint from the chipped gilded moulds lining the cabin ceiling. Once grand accommodations, now dilapidated ornaments to parse idly through while stealing moments of sleep between quiet lulls of retreat.

Her head rested heavily against the floor. She wouldn't bring herself to look out the window; there were enough reminders of the home she left behind scattered across the peeling walls of her carriage, and broken sleep ravaged her mind enough. Accepting the full terms of her departure could wait.

Devon shifted his weight between heels, his answer already soaked in uncertainty. His tight-buttoned uniform loaned order to the cabin, but the dirtied frays around the wrist cuffs from stains of black powder clouds on his forearms reminded them that loan would be called at any time. His sharp features, buried under grime and soldiers' eyes, softened.

"You owe someone your life," he says, "you're safe here."

He wasn’t a stranger to tired looks but avoided Emers'. It was no easier for him, but so long as he donned that uniform, a relic of the old world, he would answer to its rules. Her memory failed her, as it often did these days - this time not from distant gunfire emanating from the wilderness or town bells tolling in the dead of night. That dire courtesy, she hoped, would become a memory left on the rails behind. She thought that was why Devon lingered.

"Saved, safe...", He nodded to himself, "Everyone we could."

His eyes kept sideways. The poor man presented no lies or pretenses; he was only there to convince himself; teetering between despair and desolation, clinging to the last unwinding threads of normalcy. She offered what was supposed to be a smile, but her lips were limp, unwilling to lie for her. Through understanding or resignation, he accepted it and vacated the cabin.

She looked to her watch for some reprieve, but the glittering cracks across its face offered none. Time hardly mattered now anyway, but its familiarity surrendered a certain comfort. Instead, she mustered her courage to try the window she was avoiding. The grey rock mountain ranges that should have been hiding behind the shroud of deep canyons and tangling forests at this time of night glowed with a soft orange from beyond the peaks, like haunting moonlight omniscient, impossible to flee. The same trunks that offered refreshing seclusion from life back home were silhouettes tearing the once-lavender skies above the Frontiers into flat cuts of ink looming over the winding valley tracks below, surrounded by encroaching silence on every side as they pushed on through the night. It was never supposed to end like this. The ranges that welcomed her predecessors with promise howled back with aching fury. The cruelest concession was that it was an ending well earned, a moral told in every bedtime story across the Frontiers - though ignored equally by its settlers. So she watched. The closing words to a song she didn’t begin,

unfolding on the other side of her cabin in a blurring whirl. A picture show too quick to catch the details waiting in the distance; and all too slow to escape them. What little time she had left on the ranges of the Frontiers would be deciding if wherever the tracks ended in The Old Country would be far enough from the suffering left behind.

Her cabin shuttered.

“I thought you would find me,” Callum says.

“I would've when we got there,” she replies.

Callum was thin, full of worried looks down to the facial lines like his face and mind agreed on this one thing alone. Raven-haired curls hid his eye, obscuring all except his ambition.

“Suppose you’ve figured it, then,” Callum says. Emer ran her fingers over the shattered watch, “Last train off The Frontiers,”

"Seems that way,” He replies, looking out the window to find what Emer was watching with no success. They shared nothing except silence, though he couldn't wait long to break it, “I won't be killed for sins that aren't mine - or live with the ones who they belong to,” Callum says intently, "Frontiersmen, Settlers - They’re both rotten; you know it.”

Of course, they were, she thought. Though only one could claim castle doctrine.

“We could do this, you know,” He says, “there’s still time”.

Emer scoffed with tears, “What time?” She traced the ceiling's cracks, chips, and edges with her gaze; wishing that beyond their weather paint and splinters, a memory of the world she knew was still there, hiding in the background, waiting to be found again if someone cared enough to reach for it.

Callum didn't register her hurt, taking a decidedly firm stance, “A minute, that’s it,” he says “We can do something about this”.

She finally looked over at him, “Why won’t you let me have this”.

His bravado receded, “What are you talking about?”.

“Listen to this carriage,” she said with her spirit bleeding through her teeth, “rusting apart from its bone”. He straightened, refusing to rest his back against the seat. She lowered her voice to a more familiar tone “Why can't you just let it rust.”

He leaned over his lap with locked fingers to steady his thoughts,"Our destiny is there", he said quietly, "We were to born to that promise, it's ours to take" he paused, "Whatever we can dream and distill into reality - it's ours. Every last drop".

She doubted him, but not through his own faults - any future carved out of someone else's present was an idea that petrified her even if she had heard it a thousand times through the years. Still, this time felt different. No bloody border disputes between Frontiersmen and settlers; no economy in the Old Country to peddle goods to; just a home.

Callum smelled her indecision, "We didn't have a choice then, the Frontiersmen would've had us, they've taken our homes from us"

He eyed the door and hurried his hushed tone, "But we're far from them now - safe. And we could disappear into the wilderness," He sprung to his feet and looked down at her, "If you loved the Frontiers, you’d help me escape.”

She clung to Callum to shield herself from the headwind roaring between the carriages. Leaning high over the side of its ladder gave them the best view of when their moment to slip into the night would be upon them, "I stole the manifest!" He said to her, "Last stop this side of the river." She knew this route would have been quietly planned in the governor's residence during the earliest hours of clandestine nightfall as a final hedge to decaying borders and influence - though its details were guesswork. These rails hadn't seen haste in generations; a quiet trade line built in their wake to take arms and iron to the front, while spoils returned the opposite way. Above the filmy canopy, a water tower's low wooden silhouette broke through. Its promise of a new start grew with its approach, Emer watched a future unfold in Callum's eyes. Splendor and magnitude were no longer the upper bounds of his dreams, in that moment, with the tower's freedom nearing, the Frontiers would be his alone. The tower came. Then it went.

He reached behind him as if he could still touch it, sending them tumbling down to the grates below, but it didn't matter; the tower disappeared behind the bend where they were supposed to. His future vanished into memory.

“Get down from there!” Devon called from the carriage behind them, marching closer. Any air of uncertainty had left him now; the soldier didn’t need the rifle still slung over his shoulder to command fear. Scurrying inside the next car, Callum smashed the lock shut, jamming the lever into a door brace. Devon pounded the glass frame demanding to get through; Callum and Devon backed away and watched. Devon’s knuckles dusted the knotted wood with a thin coat of shattered glass. Thick pieces rolled from his hand as he reached for the lever; hanging below the reach of his fingernails. Between his wild reaches came whistle blasts. He stepped from the door to heave its call over the wind and carriages ahead of him.

“Give it back, Devils!” Devon called, thrusting his arm through the broken window like a ram, “Doesn’t matter what they promised you - they’ll kill you for it.” His threats echoed off the walls of the empty carriage they frantically withdrew from, reverberating off the forgotten ornaments the closer they got to the other side. “They’ll take your heads laughing, you hear me?” He said miserably squeezing his shoulder through the hole, “They haven’t any mercy like us, no compassion!”

Emer pulled the shade once she reached the end of the carriage door; Devon’s calls faded into ripples in the wind at this distance, a living memory stuck indiscernible, out of reach. She slammed the door with calculated haste, frightened the pinned soldier would free himself and fix them as traitors for whatever ‘it’ was, though not without a second glance to check that Callum was on the other side with her. Wherever they headed into the crumbling Old Country, she figured she could face it if she wasn’t alone.

Callum shared none of her resignations when he reached the other side, "It was mine!" He muttered frantically, "They took it from me, I'd have been a king".

Emer threw her hands, "There's nothing to take!", she shouted. The old aristocracy mattered little to Emer. Inherited titles and coattail glory was stolen from men greater than they - or at least richer, had no place in the Frontiers. They were little more than figureheads of the Old Country, living reminders holed up in quaint estates that old rule still applied to the new world.

She couldn’t hear Devon’s fanatic efforts, but she felt Callum's wild eyes. She shook her head vehemently, like his gaze would roll off in the bits of tangled glass, gripping the carriage railings until her fingertips were white. Even at this hour, she recognized the trees to pass faster, the headwind a little firmer, and the melodic thumping of the worn wheels below beat like the military band Devon marched to on campaign, and she could still hear the drums.

“Don’t be daft,” Emer said. She couldn’t find the words she wanted, but those felt enough, "We’ll stop it ourselves. I don't know what Devon’s hiding, but it's our ticket off,”.

Callum looked over his palms, already full of cuts and scrapes, “How far will you got to stay here?”, he says.

She paused, wondering where in the sky above the lavender hues she used to know had fled, “Whatever is waiting on the other side of the valley isn’t life”.

“It could be,” He says.

She shook her head, "Whether or not my heart still beating over the river doesn't make a difference," she said, "My spirit dies here."

Their silhouettes were but little shadows crossing over rooftops; tiny blackened blurs almost indistinguishable from the tree cover at their back. Treading carriage over carriage with just enough fire to inch closer to its lead against the ferocity of the driving wind ahead, they sped aloft towards the future and the past. Two wayward spirits sank deeper into the night. Impossible, she thought, to distinguish as a sign of the times or an action less vain. The maroon glow lining the horizon was a quiet shade when measured against the soft sea of violets that used to color the land. Maybe, then, she could settle her eyes somewhere past the creeping flames, the moaning wood splintering under heat, and find peace for herself in a quiet knoll under dayglow and then the cosmos, now that those days were over. Out there, beyond the reaches of selfish manifests and wars born from disputes born from lies, she would surrender herself to the ideas she thought were buried beneath the ambitions of greedy men.

Lightless crates of ledgers, records of lives and livelihoods kept for an order that no longer existed stacked where people would sit awaited them in an empty carriage. A haunting menagerie of everything life promised without its presence. The barren interior was frozen in time, existing outside both the familiar reaches it traveled and the old world of its creation, lost somewhere between two ages. A solitary lamp fluttered light over a glass box with walls thick and angled like a coffin, showering it in a permanent shade no matter how it moved. It housed an old white banner sewn with the faded colors from a flag they recognized as their own, respectfully folded at the edges. At its center, a solid red horse rearing back with a rider and spear of the same color.

Her blood burned as it coursed through her body; this was what Devon concealed.

“Surviving another time,” Callum says. He ran his fingertips over the glass cover. She strained to look anywhere except the banner controlling the compartment space. It stunk of death and carried droves of wounds hidden in the fabric threads. It wasn’t a survivor - it wasn’t even living; it was a butcher's sign, a marauding mark of suffering. If it had stories, they’d be agonized and soaked in hard crimson. Stowed among document treasures and spoils of land fast-fading into memory; soon, its grave aura would be the lone reminder of what was once home.

“Do you think they wanted it to end like this?” She says.

He pulled his gaze “How couldn’t they?”

She allowed her eyes to fall upon the banner. How strange, she thought, a colored cloth in first-class running far from the damage it inflicted - could lay cuts so deep into her.

“At least they’ll never have to see it again.” She said,

He lifted the cover from the case, the offwhite revealed no new tones in the lamplight, but he raised it above his shoulders like a child,

“Show some respect.” He says, staring through light creeping through its fabric, “The Frontiersmen were pleased to rob and kill.”

She took a step back. The cabin door was nearby, though narrowly out of reach.

“We returned the favor, but that’s our lot in this world.” He says, holding the banner to his chest, “We were born to this; it’s not our fault. And it’s not theirs that they will never see it that way”.

He returned it to the open box, “We need to become who they think we already are If we’re to survive in this world”.

“I won't be a monster.” She said. Her tone hardened. The sickly way he nurtured the banner sent knots through her lungs.

“They respect fear,” he says “ask yourself why after a century on the Frontiers we carved, they still hide from these colors.”

“Ask yourself why those colors are nailed shut in a carriage of antiques fleeing as fast as the rail carries us!” She yelled back, pointing at the box with every word.

Callum straightened back on his heels. Her shoulders sagged, and her well of conviction was empty, “They’re not hiding” She said, shaking her head, “They’re waiting for the hour to turn”. Eyes pleaded with the other for opposite reasons, and desperation widened as they searched for the intersection of peace and compromise. The world Callum dreamed of - the one she believed in - was vanishing fast, and the edges of a new one took its place like a storm front; wandering in the cloud cover, the last rays of light smothered by the coming rain. Every turn of the wheels below made neighbors into strangers. She swept the banner beneath Callum and slammed the cabin door. He pounded with fury, though it made no difference. The piles of stuffed crates needed little convincing to serve a new role as loose barricades.

The outside air stung like mid-morning in wintertime. She’d never moved this fast - not even in dreams. Every bend jolted the coal car off its tracks, rocking the behemoth engine off each set of wheels in its wake. Between her fingers was the final reminder of those wretched days. As she edged towards the engine, she buried the banner deep into the coal.

The engineer shoveled feverishly. He was shackled to the engine, though the lock sat open, free of binding to the Old Country or the doomed train. Broken from the unknown start of their journey or along the way, she thought. “Please, stop it,” She said to him, “There’s not a future wherever they’re going.” Frantic hisses from the instruments and cresting light told her time was running short. “Never was,” He said bitterly “You’re blocking the coal.”

“There’s such little time,” She insisted.

“The future’s over that river,” he says “What you don’t-” He corrected himself, “What you’ll never understand is that our past and future need each other” He wiped the filth from his face, only succeeding in smearing it further, “Ever move an engine without its coal?” He smiled to himself, taking a rare moment to lower his head, “You can jump off at the gorge if you’d like; I will even tell you when so you hit the water when it's deepest” He said, “But I’m staying. And I'll shovel until the seams buckle.” Times end approached, and the train wouldn't fight it.

A pair of hands swept her backward. Devon held tightly onto her, smothering any movement in his subduing hold. The engineer shoveled as if she were invisible. “You tell me where it is,” Devon says, “and don’t you hesitate.” Emer squirmed, throwing feet backward and flailing elbows, but his engulfing grasp meant every last one of her defiant efforts was in vain. He pushed her back against the instruments, cracking a gauge as she slumped to the floor against it. The night was peaceful from down here. The stars above brightened to the glorious backdrop of first light, ready to surrender their quiet reign to the new day. “This is our lot,” Callum says, rounding the corner of the coal car to join them in the engine. He glanced at Devon, who shouldered his rifle in a reminder of who would walk away from this conversation as the victor.

Callum stood like stone, sure of the world around him even as it caved in, “Do you feel mad?”. The clamor died. He glanced at the ground, studying the cracks in the floorboards as untold histories the rest of the world would never read. The patches and splints did no good to his details - no unwriting could save them. “Lifetimes disappear - washed away like a Spring rain,” He says in a voice laden with sympathy, “Born to this land or built by it, everything that’s left of our brave days can fit in a box. How strange it must be to be the one standing over a thousand histories shared through generations of eyes and holding a match above it”.

She looked over the three men - Devon postured, the engineer shoveled, and Callum carried the banner’s box, equally resolute in actions without a purpose. Traditions, she thought, are as fragile as the lives intertwined with them. There was no glory over the river, no lock on a place frozen in time waiting to be re-opened. Power and time shifted like meanders in the rivers; their usefulness and flow could be used by all but belonged to none - not forever anyway. Strength wasn’t divinity, and control belonged to nature alone. “I don’t hold onto anything anymore,” she says. Callum’s face shuffled from veiled confusion to anger. The engineer churned through coal with haste. The heat bled through the boiler hatch, showering her skin in its burning touch. Callum knelt in front of her, she saw his worry. Hidden behind ideas and histories is a boy scared of the consequences; ambition wasn't without its casualties. Three men supervising the death of a bygone era, praying its passing left enough of a hole to slide into.

“You can’t hide from this,” He said. A white corner emerged from the coal pile as it fell with each scoop. Its tarnished figure slowly surfaced until it found a resting place at the bottom of the shovel. Unassuming, it made its home among the coal as the brief journey to the boiler climaxed.

“I’m just waiting.” She stated quietly. The banner ignited with a terrible hiss as soon as it entered the blaze. Callum lunged after it, throwing Devon and the engineer to the edges of the engine in his effort. Emer pulled Devon’s rifle from his hands while he stumbled. She ran.

Backward she ran through the menagerie of treasures, the empty places where people once talked, the relics of past glory and stolen futures. The carriages to nowhere surged towards the river, to the Old Country, but she fought against its pull until there was nothing left to fight, nowhere else to go. She sheltered in the caboose with the rations and rats, goods still salvageable; but not valuable enough to store up front with the treasures worth remembering. Through the doors, she watched Devon advance several carriages ahead, as she had. The sun broke through the clouds, and the glimmer from the approaching river reminded her this was her last chance. She drew the rifle at Devon and dropped it just as quickly. His destiny deserved to be as fate intended; if it was the end of a rifle - so be it. It wouldn't be hers. She pointed at the carriage coupling and pulled the trigger without a second thought. Sparks popped, and metal fragments sheared. The coupling drove itself into the ground and sawed the tracks into two leylines: Old Country and new, but in its wake, the caboose tumbled over itself with rugged vigor.

The wreck rolled to a stop. The train crossed the river, Devon still leaning over the last railing staring back at her, Callum fighting the flames for scraps of glory, and the engineer pushing them on relentlessly until it disappeared beyond the other side. The Old Country waited, as it always had, on the periphery of the life she knew, looming over like a stone windmill in a field of tulips in bloom. Emerging weakly from the gnarled iron and wood, she found rest under a lonely redwood, right on the forest's edge, where she could watch the sun take flight. Past the tracks, waiting near the gorge's rim; a small figure approached. A child - Frontiersman.

The child hesitated at the tracks for a moment, concerned by the fading vibrations, but walked over them effortless once they languished into nothing more than old slivers of iron, never to be used again. Emer could fight no more. The little strength she had, she wished to spend with her home; the land she could never leave.

No room left for the stories of violent hardship she heard her entire life on the Frontiers; no fear found her as she sat among the roots, waiting for whatever end was coming. When she looked into his eyes, she gave her heart to sorrow because she could tell the child knew none. The first settlers, the Frontiersmen - the original habitants of the land were like a legend to her, stories. Lost to either time or meaning; the faces escaped the details, and so did truth whenever the wind swelled. Finally, still for the first time on the forest floor among the redwoods, she watched the eyes deserted in the last age, only now with the chance to realize how deep his well of love and anguish was sealed from sunlight. She could never expect to understand, but in these moments, she hoped her desperate effort could light a ray of sympathy through the mud, waiting for the hour to turn, reaching into that well for any truth; any experience damning or freeing, it mattered the same. The truths of this land never flew under a banner; they watched behind every pair of eyes on the other side of it, silent histories enduring sorrow, toppling empires looking past them.

The child looked to Emer and extended a fistful of lavender.