Memory, by its very nature, can and will contradict itself. Everything we are can be forgotten. Everything we are not may be remembered.
Papyrus was my name. I was the God Scribe, the Recorder of Secrets, the Lady of Memory, and the Protector of Forgotten Things. I remembered this.
But it didn’t matter what I once was. It only mattered who I was at that moment. At that present time, I felt like a helpless little girl. People were eating each other, or eating pieces of each other, and I was in danger of being turned into the next meal--in part, or wholly.
I was trapped and unarmed, with nothing to my person but my fraying wits and my oversuit. I guess I had a voice too. I started screaming. The most I could hope for was that someone would get annoyed and come in to shut me up. Then I would have an opportunity to break out.
But nobody came. I screamed and shouted and pleaded, but only managed to make my throat sore. I looked under the bed for something, but only came away with three wooden cups and the bowl from before. In frustration, I threw one of the cups at the door, but only managed to splinter a sliver of wood off the construction.
I collapsed to the ground and my oversuit hardened and cushioned the fall. Then I smacked myself in the face.
I’m wearing an oversuit! I thought. I’m also stupid. This is what emotion does. This is all it’s good for. It simply blinds you.
I got up and as the suit relaxed, so did I. It brought with it an adrenaline-honed focus. I looked at the splinter on the floor.
Wood could be broken, bent.
“I’m so used to unbreakable materials--divine seals,” I whispered to myself. “But this world is breakable. It’s a bone only just healed.” I went to the door and put my eye against one of the cracks. Beyond the door, I could see the shadow of two men outside keeping watch, but faced away from the door. I saw one of them reach up and pick his nose before flicking a globule away from him. They didn’t look armed, but it was hard to tell since they were wearing headscarves and robes.
I stepped back from the door and took a deep breath. Letting it out slowly, I picked up a foot and… kicked as hard as I could muster.
My oversuit compressed around my knee and shin. My shoe hardened around my foot, bracing me. I felt the suit press rigidly around my ankle, supporting the impact. For a moment, I thought the suit would give way and all the bones in my right leg would touch each other, but it held strong and I heard the beautiful crack of polymer reaching through two layers of pine. I imagine the second layer had been the wooden support bracing the door shut.
When my foot returned to the ground, I pushed forward with my shoulder, throwing all of my weight into the door.
It gave way and I tumbled into the light of the setting sun. I only just rolled to my feet. Instinct? I’ve heard the stories, I thought absently as I stood up straight.
As a god--a phrase you’ll no doubt read and groan at before long, as I groan at its repetitive usage--I’d had no need for the primal survival sense. What need have you to survive when your very existence is always guaranteed by the existence of your believers?
But now I needed to rely on it, didn’t I?
The guards turned, their leathery hands going for rods of spiraled, black iron resting against the shack. Rebar? I thought before one of them struck out at me and I rolled out of the way, popping back to my feet in an instant. This body can move! I thought in elation, skirting out of the way as the second guard swung at my side like I was tree meant to be chopped down. These weren’t swordsman, by any accounting, but they did mean to hurt me.
After dodging another strike from the first, relying on my newfound human instincts more than anything, I rolled into his space and stepped down on his foot as hard as I could. I felt my shoes turn as hard as the rebar in his hand and saw the man’s eyes widen through the gap in his scarf. Then he howled, dropping his weapon and folding over to tend to his smashed foot.
I flinched and buckled forward as the second man hit me in the back. My oversuit protected me from the brunt of the blow, but it still hurt! I shook my head to clear the red dust from my eyes and got back to my feet. I turned and the rebar sang as it just missed my jaw. I had tipped my chin up to avoid it completely. Instinct. Instinct.
I looked back at my adversary and I kicked up with a toe. The tip of my shoe hardened as it struck him in the scarf. I heard a wet squelch as he bit his tongue. His eyes squeezed together and he dropped the bar of metal and put both his hands to his mouth.
The whinny of a horse and boots hitting dust interrupted my thoughts, but didn’t distract my actions. Both of the guards were on the ground now. I meant to question the one nursing his broken foot, but as I grabbed the scruff of his head scarf, there was a resounding gunshot that made my ears ring.
A female voice roared over the din: “ENOUGH!”
I dropped the moaning guard in surprise. Slowly, I turned.
As the adrenaline left and the biting chill of fear settled over me once more, my eyes quickly took it all in, and I assessed the situation.
There was a woman on a chestnut colored horse. Half the horse’s face was exposed and it’s rusting, bronze skeleton could be seen. Its glassy eyes rolled and it snorted mechanically as its rider pat its neck affectionately. “Easy, Four-by,” the woman said. Her other arm was outstretched and a smoking revolver was aimed in my direction. She was blonde, fair skinned, and she was missing her right leg from the knee down, but instead of a peg leg, she boasted a grim, black, metal prosthetic that seemed too big and ungainly for her frame.
The woman and her horse were accompanied by a handful of women with rifles--all of them trained on me, of course. They were wearing cotton robes, but the cloth was cinched up around their legs with hemp twine and their headscarves were simply draped around their necks and shoulders, exposing their tanned skin and blonde heads. None of them was missing a limb, but not one among them had either of her ears. Were the missing ears and legs status symbols amongst this cannibal tribe? I didn’t know what to make of it all, only that I was in a pickle for certain.
“Poppy of the Icy Earth,” the horsewoman addressed me. “You were supposed to wait for me.” She sounded only slightly aggrieved.
“Then you must be Matron Waska,” I said. “I must not be food.”
“Food?” the horsewoman stated, but then she laughed. She was the only one that laughed. Everyone else was focused… or writhing on the ground in pain. “Fancy speech… Who told you, you must be food?”
“I remember what human flesh smells like,” I said to her.
Waska’s smile fell. Her jaw fluttered as she looked out at her little squad of shooters. They looked capable. None of them wavered even as she glared openly at them. They only had eyes for me. It wasn’t one of them who had told me of course. Waska stated, “You can fight.”
“I remember how to fight,” I replied without thinking. I added meekly, “There… is a difference.”
“Not if the results’re the same,” she said dryly. She looked to her squad then and barked, “Down!” They all relaxed and slung their rifles onto their backs almost in tandem. “Get ‘em up.” She gestured at the men still moaning on the ground and the women came forward to pull them to. They weren’t afraid of me. They were the real fighters here, the real protectors.
I waited and watched until they had pulled their comrades away.
Waska snapped her fingers to draw my attention to her. She waved the revolver in her hand like a rattle. She got off her horse and limped over to me. I braced myself for a fight, but she proffered the revolver to me, handgrip out and asked, “You ‘member how these work?”
I recognized its silhouette. It was the gun from The Cradle. Much good it did me now. All its ammo and cleaning supplies had been in my haversack, which was in some canyon to the east. I didn’t take it from her. “Where did you get it?” I could feel a very deep anger within me starting to boil up like hot bile. Easy, I told myself, but the anger still came, furious and full of retribution.
She shrugged and lowered her voice as she said, “Picked it off the corpse of a wanderer to the east of here. He had a hole in his head. It’s only got three shots left, but we don’t know how to reload it.”
My anger evaporated, but my wariness remained. I squinted at her. “You wasted one of your shots to stop me?”
She smiled at me. “Got you to stop, didn’t it? So?”
“You have cylinder rifles,” I said. “It’s the same principle.”
“Rifles?” Waska stated. “You mean, the cylinder on this one is the same as the long ones?”
I repressed the urge to roll my eyes. “Yes.”
“Well, we don’t know how those work either.”
“You threatened me with things you don’t even…” I trailed off as understanding took hold. These riflewomen were simply using psychological warfare. They had no actual prowess--just moxy; just raw, jazzy charisma. They knew they could threaten people with them, but didn’t know how to maintain them. I wondered, Before Waska shot me--Before she saw the hole in the wanderer--did she know what guns were capable of? Do any of these women know?
“You didn’t call my bluff, so you lost,” Waska said. She proffered the gun to me again. Even this gesture was like a dare. Perhaps she trusted that I wouldn’t kill her outright--that I would hear her out. “Tell me how they work… if you can remember.”
“And what? You won’t eat my leg?”
Waska gave me a chiding expression. “My name is Waska of House Wir. I swear on my allegiance to Retzu and her empty throne that I will not eat one hair on Poppy of the Icy Earth’s head.” She looked up at the sky and shouted, “Hear me! I swear this oath to any who would hear!”
“I hear you,” I responded automatically, but then chastised myself internally. I figured, instinct or no, the human capacity for latching on to habits was going to get me killed.
Waska didn’t seem to notice, or she didn’t understand the significance of my reply. She smiled at me. “How’s that then?”
I took the gun from her and spun the cylinder. It was in good working order, surprisingly. Maybe they had other gun cleaning kits in the collection of shacks they called Hearthwir, maybe not. I tamped the revolver open and cycled through it. It was a six-shooter, alright, but there were four bullets still in the chamber, not three. I closed it up and cocked it back a couple times before I showed her as well. Several of the other women came close to see the demonstration and some of them looked to cleaning and reloading their own rifles using the same principles, if not the same processes, while I instructed Matron Waska.
All the while, I thought, Perhaps this place was once an old armory? The farthest thing west, next to salt flats, Holla had said… Salt flats could be the remnants of an ocean. Could I be near the west coastline of America? The Cradle wasn’t far from the ocean. They speak a bastardized English here. It would make sense… But Retzu? Man’s God? ‘Phage? All of it sounds so alien. On top of the gender dynamics, I might as well be on a different planet!
The disparity in the spread of information is gulf-like, to add. Holla seemed like she had an answer for everything, but Waska is nothing but a series of questions on two legs--well, one leg, really. But she mentioned an allegiance and a House. Does that mean there’s some form of acting government? It can’t be too moral, considering this village’s diet. Stone-forbid any governing body condone the degradation of its constituents…
After demonstrating how to reload and clear, I gave the gun back to Matron Waska and asked in their terminology, “Where is my staff?” The sun had set in all that time. Torches were being lit and I could see the glows of maybe a dozen campfires scattered throughout the maze of shacks and shanty houses. It was a ghetto more than a town.
Waska took the weapon from me and turned it over in her hands, marvelling at it. She was all smiles. Her gums were bloody and her teeth were the same brownish-red as the bottom hemline of her trussed-up robe. “Can you imagine a thousand of these? Can you imagine shooting a thousand times?”
“I don’t have to imagine,” I said grimly.
Waska met my eyes and her smile was mischievous. “I like you, Poppy. You’ve got a certain something.”
“Where is my staff, Matron Waska?”
“Oh, I dunno, Kid. I forget where I put it,” she said in mock grief, putting one of her knuckles to her forehead as she turned away from me for a moment. She let out a sigh. “All our memories ain’t what they used to be.”
“Waska… Tell me where my staff is.”
She looked over her shoulder at me. “You said four shots, right?”
“Yes, now would you--”
The shark bit my leg and twisted.
I cried out as ringing filled my ears and I folded just like the guard had earlier. As I gripped my shin with both my hands, my oversuit knitted back together over the point of entry and exit. I felt a cooling sensation take over the burning fire of the wound and I let out a whimper as Waska limped to my side and stood over me, pointing the gun at my face.
“Well, I’ll be… That’s a fancy little outfit you’re wearing. Knock me up and call me Nancy… Does it still hurt?” she asked me.
“Fuck you!” I snarled through my teeth.
She laughed and pressed the hot barrel against me. I screamed as it branded a crescent into my forehead. She pulled it away only to belt me across the head with it. I saw light at the edge of my vision as I collapsed.
I felt a glob of warm spit hit the side of my cheek before Waska said, “No use wasting another bullet. We’ll just burn you alive. Not like you can run away in your condition anyway.”
Through a haze, I opened my good eye and slurred, “You swore… You swore.”
“Yeah. That I wouldn’t eat one hair on your head… I can’t speak for the rest of Hearthwir,” Waska said with a laugh. “You damned mole people are all the fucking same. So trusting! It’s like you were born yesterday! It’s fucking beautiful… Well, welcome to the real world. Life’s hot and unfair, and then people eat you.”
She grabbed my bad leg and started pulling. I yelled in pain, shouted at her to let me go. Of course it was useless, but what else was there to do? Two people grabbed my hands and another grabbed my good leg. I was stretched taunt. They carried me through the sea of pine shacks. The smell of burning meat was overwhelming. I thought about the ovens. I thought about the sting of the gun barrel and tried to multiply the sensation in my head. That wasn’t hard to do. I wiggled and writhed, but they were strong, sinewy. I saw stars above me, barely visible because of the fires.
When was the last time I had seen Asteri’s stars?
I couldn’t remember.
Back from nothing after a hundred years and this was it. Alive for but a moment compared to the eternity I had once looked forward to, and I was already facing my end… It was so disheartening. Was this what it felt like to people who died “before their time”? Did they see it as unfair or cruel? In that moment, I wished Gods still were… so that I could pray to them. My mind turned to panic. I couldn’t see out of my left eye. At the edge of everything was this stark, animal knowledge that I was going to stop being and I was frightened by it.
I blathered, “I-I am Papyrus! I am the God Scribe!”
“Shut up,” a gravel-like female voice barked.
“Lady of Memory and Protector of F-Forgotten Things!”
“Keep it up. The pyre loves talkers. They really sizzle.”
“You can’t kill me!” I screamed. “You cannot kill what never lived!”
“Walk outta the pitch and prove it,” Waska hissed near my head.
I stared up at the stars. I knew their significance. Heroes of old are captured in those stars, I thought distantly, my mind trying to separate itself from what was happening. Human beings once looked up at the stars and said to themselves, I see my brother in those lights. He was truly an example for us all. They told themselves stories and someone, who was once just a brother, became an example of something more--something perfect. The gods were in these stars once, I thought to myself as tears welled in my eyes. But not I.
I was stone.
I lost my rigidity and closed my eyes. If only I had the power to be stone once more, I would change, but I was just mortal and helpless.
Why?
The shrill sound of a horse screaming made everyone stop, stalk-still.
I cracked open my eye.
“Four-by?” Waska called out.
There were murmurs of unrest all around me. I tried to look around, but the women were pressed in close to me, blocking any view I could have had.
Another animal scream belted out and Waska dropped my bad leg, making me cry out. “Four-by!” she shouted, this time sounding anguished. She jabbed a finger at the riflewoman gripping one of my arms and growled, “Get! Go!” Then she gestured at the remainder, barking at them to spread out. “What in Sam’s beard is goin’ on?!”
A hush had come over the camp. I was on the ground, my left hand itching at my side, stretching toward my leg. The cool numbness was trickling away with every second, giving way to fire and pain.
Waska was beside me. I could have reached out and touched her.
Well, why not? I asked myself. She’ll shoot you, I answered. Better than burning, I countered. Or… you could wait for her attention to be elsewhere, roll on your belly, and start crawling for your mortal life like the nert-herding bookworm you really are.
“Oh,” I breathed to myself, blinking. “Okay.”
Waska’s head was swivelling back and forth as she vigilantly awaited the return of her flock and good news regarding her horse.
I flipped onto my belly as quietly as I could and started pulling myself away from her. My suit made an uncomfortable noise then and expelled a wooden cup’s worth of blood onto the ground. It made a sound like a wet fart.
Waska noticed.
I felt a boot in the small of my back, pressing me into the dirt. “Don’t go anywhere… It’s probably just the boyos returning. Four-by gets excited by that sometimes,” Waska said reassuringly, but it felt like she was saying it more for her own benefit.
The both of us looked up when we heard another scream, but this time it was entirely human. Waska let me go and pulled me to my feet, making my grumble in protest as I was forced to put pressure on my shot leg. “Quiet now!” she growled at me, waving the revolver around, scanning the houses around us. A campfire nearby went out, pitching us nearly into darkness. Waska’s breath was hot in my ear. The smell of it was rancid.
What could be worse than cannibals? I reasoned. Don’t you dare, I told myself. I took a deep breath anyway and started shouting hoarsely, “HELP! ANYBODY! HEL--!” Waska almost knocked teeth from me as she hit me with the handgrip of the gun. I hit the dirt on all fours and she put her boot heel on me again, but this time she didn’t say anything. Her blonde head darted to and fro. She was clearly scared out of her mind.
We heard a loud yelp of pain, this one closer, and Waska cocked the action back with two hands. Another fire was doused. Another shout. A cry. More darkness. As the last bit of orange light disappeared and the starlight enveloped us, Waska let out a low hiss. “Come on,” she whispered. “What the fuck are you?”
“What is a man?” a mechanized voice asked in kind.
Waska spun around, lifting her boot off of me. I spit out red dirt and started crawling. The Matron let me go as I heard her ask, “You metal-headed fuck--How many are you?”
“Only two. We’re just here for the water filter,” the man said.
“Of course you are,” Waska whispered bitterly.
The man laughed cruelly. “Well, I guess that’s not totally true. We were here for the crystal, but then we found out you’re eating people. And as a Matron from one of Retzu’s Houses? That’s just not right! It’s a dog-eat-dog world out here already, but human beings have to be better.” He scoffed. “Augh, what am I doing? Trying to moralize you--Hmph! What a waste of breath.”
There was a loud bang and I heard the thud and scrape of a large shape hitting the ground. Then the man called out in a whine, “Djince! You bastard, she was mine! I never get them at point blank like that. I wanted to see her head explode…”
There was another thud. Are they getting closer to me? I thought, still crawling, still farting out blood.
Another man’s voice noted, “You talk too much.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the first man said. There was a patting of cloth, then boots scraped. I didn’t dare look behind me, but I could hear their footfalls getting closer. My teeth started to chatter. I was cold, in shock, and losing blood too fast for my liking.
The two men came up beside me and as I turned my head, the slighter of the two crouched down and put a gloved hand on my back. I froze. “Hey,” the first man said quietly, “Stop… You’re bleeding pretty bad.” His head was as black as a beetle's carapice. His eyes were rose tinted glass. I didn’t know what I was looking at. Tactical helmets? Those were used during the fourth World War.
I rolled onto my back and braced myself against my elbows, my head swimming. “S-Stopped,” I said, my voice shaking. The first man, crouching with his beetle helmet, looked up at his larger compatriot.
The bigger man was wearing a hood over his helmet, his rose colored optics were more numerous and there was a red light on his forehead. When he spoke, it came out of a box respirator. “Shelter.”
“The Cradle--a holy place,” I corrected. “My name is Papyrus.” Then the back of my head hit dirt and my eyes swam with black stars.
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