LIL’ CALICO
Chapter 41 of my dystopian utopian novel, The Lost City of Desire
[Read chapters 1-40 here. Only five chapters remaining.]
Carmen sparked some puffballs into flames and set that tiny ember onto some wood shavings. Once the shavings glowed, she shook them onto the twigs and her fire burst forth, warm and enticing. She set several apples she’d found earlier in the day on stones in the coals to bake. Raw, they were too sour, and she hoped the flames would caramelize the skins to sweeten her dinner.
Her bed was a mound of leaves on which she’d set pine boughs, far enough from the fire not to burn, she hoped, but close enough that she’d stay warm. She lay down for a bit to rest while the apples cooked. Her eyes closed, she realized just how exhausted she was from the day’s hike. The heat of the fire felt so good on her legs. She started to drift. And then she heard a crack. She opened her eyes: the fire, the sticks burning. It wasn’t that. She felt a presence.
There on the other side of the fire in the flickering shadows was a girl she’d seen back at the tree houses. Freckled skin, strawberry blond hair, wearing a long old-fashioned dress of the type Calico Mom wore.
Carmen sat up, tense. The young woman smiled, hugging her knees into her chest.
“What are you doing here?” Carmen said.
She felt in the dirt behind her for a rock, anything she could throw. She found a stick. I’ll stab her, she thought. Right in the throat. She could feel the stick going into the soft part, the gurgle that followed. No one’s going to hurt me.
The girl was silent. Just smiled.
This unnerved Carmen even more, and she clutched the stick tightly.
“I know you can talk. I know all of you can talk.”
The girl just shook her head no and pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil and wrote a few words. In a moment, she tore out the sheet and handed it to Carmen:
“They sent me here to help you. I’ve been following you. We were worried you’d get in trouble out here.”
“I don’t need any help,” Carmen said.
The girl looked at her quietly, which Carmen interpreted as pity. Carmen didn't like that, but she began to calm down.
“Are you sure?” the girl wrote.
“I’m fine,” Carmen said. “What’s your name?”
The girl didn’t answer, just gave her a goofy, happy look.
“Ok, I’m going to call you, hmmm. I’m going to call you Little Calico.”
The girl beamed.
“That’s right, little Calico. Thank you for helping me.”
The girl wrote some words and handed them to Carmen.
“You might not know the dangers. I’ve been around them all my life, so I can spot them. We are very close to the wall.”
“What do you know about the wall?”
That smile again, the wide eyes that in their stillness projected arrogance: I know. I am wise. I don’t need to brag about it.
“We are all from over there,” she wrote. “I’ve been there several times. And I know that these are the lands where you have to be the most careful. And there are lands where you are safe. You need to eat.”
The girl opened her small backpack, reached in and pulled out a dead rabbit, sunken in death, not yet cleaned.
Holy hell, Carmen thought, I am so frigging hungry.
“Slingshot,” Little Calico wrote.
She picked a nearby flat rock and went about eviscerating the rabbit. As she did that, Carmen built up the fire, excited about the meat to come. This Little Calico wasn’t so bad. Together they roasted pieces of rabbit on green sticks. It was hard to wait until they were cooked to eat them, and at one point Carmen bit into a barely cooked piece of heart even as the girl shook her finger no!
Phew, it was gross.
“Parasites,” the girl wrote on her paper. She wasn’t smiling.
Carmen finished cooking the piece.
“Ok, thank you,” Carmen said when they’d finished the rabbit.
She immediately got tired in that heavy way the body gets when it’s finally been satisfied, so she built up the fire again and lay down in the dirt, a stone as her pillow. The girl sat on a boulder, scribbling furiously in her notebook, possessed by a thought.
Just before sunrise the birds started in. The sky was still inky blue and they were crowing and whistling and caw cawing and singing like this was the first day of the universe. Carmen sat up and stretched and looked around. For a moment she thought maybe she’d imagined the whole thing but then she saw the rabbit bones in the ashes and she knew it was real.
The girl appeared from the trees. It felt so good to be taken care of, even if only for an evening,” Carmen called to her.
Carmen hadn’t realized how much she’d been on her own in the last days, how much she’d been left to her own devices. She didn’t mind that, but she also didn’t mind the kind thoughts and the rabbit.
“My pleasure,” said the girl, her voice a little rusty.
Then she folded a paper and put it on the ground, held in place by a small rock. Carmen picked it up and read the letter.
“My Dear Carmen,
I want to tell you how I know what I know.
My heart came from the other side.
I am born of the Hard Fork. My family lived there when I came to be. We were dispatched from there when I was a child, because we refused to believe. (They are crazy people. They demand submission. They are going to hurt you if you say anything different.)
The crossing is not difficult – unless you get caught by the wrong person. Then you’ll either submit and convert or you’ll suffer. But if you make it inside, you’ll probably do all right..
I will be by your side, in spirit and in flesh.
This is what we do, the tree people. We protect and nurture. It is our God-given duty. So be safe. Be with us. Don’t be surprised by anything. Everything will happen. You can’t control the flow of time.
Lil’ Calico
Just then, boom, boom, boom, gunshots nearby. Carmen hid behind a tree. It seemed like the sound came from near the trail. She peaked around. No one was near, except Lil’ Calico, also behind a tree. She hid for a long time, waiting for movement. While she waited, she chewed a stick and rubbed it against her gums to clean her teeth and then chewed a couple of pine needles to get rid of the night taste in her mouth. Always do something, was her motto. After minutes had passed, she started carefully down the trail again. She felt energized and alert, and remembered the Lil’ Calicos’s words: “these are the lands where you have to be careful.”
She stepped back onto the trail and proceeded cautiously.
And there ahead was a large hole, obviously man made, a trap.
She slowed and checked her breathing so as not to make a sound, crouched down and moved up to the edge of the pit. She leaned over and saw there at the bottom her brother and Sarah, curled up like wild children in the dirt. Sarah held the gun. Carmen looked quickly around, 360 degrees, to see if anyone was watching. She saw no one.
“Joe,” she called in a loud whisper. “Joe!” she called louder.
She saw Sarah open her eyes.
“Wake up,” Carmen called. “It’s me.”
“Carmen?” Sarah said? “Oh my God, oh my God.” She started crying, sobbing, as though everything broken had suddenly been revealed.
pivotal!!