(Nothing But) Flowers by John G. McDaid (top 20 books to read .TXT) 📖

(Nothing But) Flowers

by John G. McDaid

For Cory and Alice

"By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie."

-Gerald Manley Hopkins

Spring and Fall, to a Young Child

Every afternoon the rains, as they had for generations, swept in from the saltlands to the west and drove the scavengers into the shelter of the ruins ringing the lagoon. The sky grayed, and wind, pungent with ozone and canebrake, flung stinging flights of droplets into the dank concrete holes.

The Fox Man ran from squat to squat, warning. "Big storm coming." He wore an outfit of scraggy orange fur, scabrous and holed, and as he pranced past, fat raindrops spattered his costume to a blotchy patchwork. Women set out plastic jugs, gathered utensils, and shoveled coals from cooking fires into logs to hustle indoors. Naked children danced in the puddles.

Donal paid no mind to either the storm or the Fox Man, but he always had to smile at that fancy outfit, in a World of loincloths and grass skirts. To Donal, the costume looked more like a dog, though for effect the Fox Man -- or someone who owed him a favor, he was no Hunter -- had hung a poorly preserved fox head from a leather necklace. All Donal wore was a deerskin belt in which was tucked a roughly hammered machete. His dozen braves followed behind like ducklings, spread out in a widening wake; the first rank had knives, as befitting his sidemen, but Donal alone carried a blade longer than his hand.

Donal and his pack had come in on the south side of the canal, and trooped past three ruins before he split off to his squat in the center. The two-story brick building was still standing -- unlike some of the neighboring metal structures which had long ago rusted and collapsed inward -- and while parts of the heavy stone roof and windows were gone, generations had fashioned replacements with tree trunks and grasses to maintain a weatherproof refuge. The second floor, with its huge rotted gathering place, was unstable; they never used it. But there was space for dozens of families downstairs, in the low oval room ringed with twelve pillars past which hung tattered remnants of pictures and signs in the script of the World builders.

The squat's position, its construction, and these ancient artifacts on the walls, gave it pride of place among folk at the lagoon. The squatters defended it ferociously, and Donal was its leading fighter.

He paused in the portico, blinking water out of his eyes, watching stragglers run for cover and canoes out on the lagoon pulling for shore. He could pick out the foreign visitors -- outsiders -- wandering aimlessly, sight-seers among the ruins even in this far corner of the World. Just a handful; nowhere near the number over at the Castle.

Donal wiped rain off his body, threaded effortlessly through the families crouched on pallets of palm leaves and grasses around the big room. A dim shaft of green stormlight picked out the faces watching from deep in the recesses, and as he walked by, he saw flickering shadows across their troubled eyes.

The rain was nothing new; storms rolled through predictably every afternoon, tiny mirrors of the much larger shift in the seasons. Each wheel of the year the rains started a little earlier; the bogs drained more slowly. The cultivated lands ran riot with grasses and weeds. The horses had nowhere to run. New trackways had to be built across the fens to the Castle each spring.

Donal found his way to the tiny pallet he shared with his five-year-old brother, a tiny square against the wall opposite the doorway, beneath one of the frayed signs of the Builders. He was used to the hunting, but today his gang had traveled all the way down by the World Tree, clearing paths and setting snares, and his shoulders ached from the daylong exertion. He missed his brother, left to be watched over by the other families in the squat when the work was dangerous. Donal trusted they would never leave him alone. Donal laid his machete at the foot of the mat and retrieved the small leather bag that held his most prized possessions, tied it again to his belt.

Ewen was waiting for him. He somehow managed to stay clean among the general filth in the squat. Ewen leaned against the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, looking exactly the way Donal remembered him. Donal was always struck by his skin, unnaturally white like their mother's had been.

"Ergot," chirped Ewan, pointing. In front of him sat a lap-top memory-box with fragrant tufts of greenery poking from its partitioned slots. It was a rough-hewn affair, knocked together from scraps of wood by the acolytes of Emic. The wise women came by with fresh bits of plants and stories to jog memories, mostly of the elderly who tended the gardens and foraged for nuts and berries. Donal thought they must like his brother to give him one of the boxes; it certainly couldn't be for him. He didn't care about memory. Not remembering things, frankly, made it easier to do what was necessary.

Ewan, on the other hand, was young. The forgetting had not fully gripped him, and the whole world, nameable and retrievable, whirled incessantly at the tips of his fingers and tongue. Donal could almost remember what it was like to remember. Sometimes Ewan helped him, prompting, a whisper in his ear.

"Amanita muscaria!" cheeped Ewan.

Most children without mothers did nowhere near this well. Whatever the forgetting was, those fed at their mother's breast managed to fight it off for a year or two. Ewen was lucky for someone who had only been nursed occasionally by kind women in the squat, with Donal his sole caretaker since their mother died giving birth.

At least they had been able to eat her. When the wise women came to cut her up, while there was sadness at her passing with child, they found nothing bad.

His father, unfortunately, was a different story. He had been killed by a wolf on a hunting party when Donal was Ewen's age. When the women opened him, he was full of tumors. It was a troubling sadness; he had shown no sign, had been vigorous and healthy, but then he was dead, Ewen was now the responsible one, and they could not even share his father's flesh, leaving it instead for the wolves. May they be poisoned and die, Donal thought.

"Banisteria Caapi," Ewen pointed in the box. Donal smiled at him, nodded. "Banisteria Caapi," he repeated, scrunching up leaves so they could both take a nap.

He had slept under the same faded signs ("Letters," Ewen constantly reminded him) -- arrow head-forked branch-standing zigzag -- since he was a child. His parents parents had staked out a the space not long after the dawn of the World, and it was the only home he had ever known. He drifted to sleep with the reassuring smells of sweat and wood smoke, lulled by the spatter and drip of rain through the ceiling.

When he awoke it was dark. He rolled over, grabbed his machete, and headed out back to pee. The reek of fermenting night soil was like a soft wet fist in his nose. A row of trenches marched off across the field behind the squat, each turned over to start a new one as they filled. Donal thought it was past time.

Back in the main room, the cooks had been working in their huge pot, one left over from the World Builders, which tonight held a bubbling stew of fish and late summer vegetables. Then it was time for everyone to come out of their squats and join hands for the evening chant, while six boats with priestesses of Emic circled the lagoon carrying their fires. Their acolytes, in dark robes and veils, set up on the paths, ladling drinks from black cauldrons. Donal knocked his back quickly; the taste was bitter, and almost immediately started up a vague itching sensation behind his eyes; within a few minutes, everything seemed to get wider, as if the world was being squashed. It was not an unpleasant sensation, and he walked with Ewen down to the lagoon, finding the hands of people next to him almost automatically.

Out of the earliest mist of childhood, one of the few things Donal could remember was this service, repeated, every night. Even so, he would still find himself forgetting the words if he didn't concentrate, as the sound of the big drums began from the squat next door.

"One World," came the chant. "One World for all."

The priestesses were spinning flaming balls on slings, and lofting them high to fall, hissing, into the lagoon.

"One moon. One sun. One World to hold the fallen sparks."

Donal joined in as he watched the flaming arcs over the lagoon with languid fascination. The chanting, well, that was just words. He believed far more in his machete and the men who followed him than in anything the priestesses said. The Castle was no more and no less than the rest of the World. Older, perhaps, but it held no interest for him.

Occasionally, the high priestess -- Emic herself -- would show up at the ceremony, wearing her sleek black costume and grotesque mask, but tonight was not one of those times, and, a bit disappointed, the group slowly dispersed.

When he got back to his squat, a woman and child were lying on his pallet. The woman looked middle-aged -- but so, of course, did everyone, once they were older than about Donal's sixteen years.

"Out," he said. "My space." His neighbors, filtering in, were dimly visible in the torchlight from the entrance. A murmuring began, and groups jiggled and poked each other, drifting over to watch.

"My girl and I need a place to sleep. We were in the Volcano squat, but your gang has taken over. They're throwing out older women."

Donal knew this. A group of his junior squad members lived in the Volcano ruin, and they had been complaining about some of the dispossessed who had not been obliging company.

"Not my problem. This is my space."

"My daughter and I need a place to sleep. We thought you might be willing to share."

"No. Get out."

"I knew your mother. She and I used to dig for shining wire together as children. I used to take care of you sometimes. Don't you remember?"

"No."

"Please. We could cook for you. You have two whole pallets," begged the woman. "What do you need all that space for?"

"For my brother, Ewen."

She looked at him. Her child, a smudged-faced girl of four or five, was half-huddled behind her, wide-eyed, looking at where Donal had his hand on Ewen's head, then back to his face.

The woman saw she was gaining no ground, changed tactics. "You could take me as a mate," she said, shifting the front of her grass skirt.

Ewen turned away with an "Eeew."

Donal grabbed the woman's arm, pulled her to her feet. The little girl screamed.

She slapped his face, a stinging blow that made his left eye water. He felt a trickle of blood in his eyebrow; he hadn't seen she was wearing a ring. She curled to deliver a kick to his