Steel People Chapter 5: The End of the River
Thank you all for coming on this impromptu journey with me. If you’ve missed them, here are the previous chapters:
Chapter 3: Where River Meets Sky
Chapter 4: The Bottom of Winter
As we were escorted through the trees, I noticed one was actually perfectly straight and smooth. As I passed, I stopped to examine it. It was a lamp post of black metal. The empty light frame sat atop it like a griming skull, with a branch growing straight through it
“We’re on the outskirts of the old steel people city,” grandmother Inara said in her harsh voice. “We’re almost there.”
“What Steel People city?” I said.
“Wichita.”
“We made it all the way up to Kansas?” I said. The rest of our procession, my beloved Maybelle and our other guards, just looked back and forth between us.
“I haven’t made it home to my bed tonight
This was the first mention of beds. Beds meant houses and proper settlements. My heart rose.
The little girl Mamluck, who’d been leading me by the hand as her prisoner for the past week, tugged me along. I ruffled her wild black hair with my free hand. Her cousin Marius bent to kiss Maybelle’s wrist, then led her along.
We passed another lamp post, then another in line. I realized it was a street and looked down. Bits of asphalt were scattered at our feet, emerging from the melting snow and dead vegetation.
I looked up and saw boxy shapes; rusted metal bodies with a half-circle divot in each corner. Cars, I realized. Just from looking at them I could tell these weren’t the solex rides used in Boston, completely eco-friendly. These were the fuel burning, toxin spewing models that had killed the world.
“The Midwest was the first region to die, when the plains became a desert. These ruins have to be fifty years old,” I said.
“I was a little girl the last time these cars drove,” Inara said. She knocked a rusted door with the butt of her rifle. Rust exploded and it collapsed with a crash. Mamluck shivered so hard I felt it through her hand. I squeezed it in turn.
“When Boston fell.”
“I don’t care, and no one else will. You just survived. That does not make you a river person,” she said.
“I know rivertalkers can decide that, so don’t you say that,” Maybelle said.
“And I know his judgement better than you do,” Inara said. Her daughter and granddaughter leading us nodded along, then shushed the little cousins’ protest.
Then the trees fell away on the right, and became a cracked, parched plain. The ruins of houses spread across the horizon and rose steadily into a dozen skeletal skyscrapers. With their windows long gone they were floors pinned between structural beams. They were baked bones in the sun. Beyond them the desert continued into the hazy distance
“When the desert formed, the utilities and hyperlink were cut off. Those who could leave, left. Everyone else starved and fought each other. I survived by hiding in abandoned houses and learning to hunt rats,” she said.
“You’re disturbing the children,” her daughter, Imanna said.
“No she’s not!” Ben said and pumped Maybelle’s hand in excitement.
“Remember when we found that graveyard that had flooded and we saw all those bones? That didn’t scare me,” Mamluk said. She smirked up at me and I winked properly.
“It was a disturbing time,” Inara said. “I want our little loves to know from my struggles.”
“Are we going in there?” Maybelle said as I studied the buildings. They were nothing like the sleek towers of Boston. They were blocky, high window high waste structures.
“No. The ground is poisoned. We’re following the river,” Inara said.
Soon the trees on the left fell away into a mixture of stumps hewn close to the ground, and little lumps of rock.
I stared at them, then Maybelle. She looked equally confused. I nodded quickly and pleaded with her to ask.
“What are those rock piles for?” she said.
“Each shields a young sapling during its first winter,” Imanna said with a smile. “We’ve got to watch over them their first year.”
“Do they always live?” Maybelle said.
“Usually. They are each buried with a fish for fertilizer and are kept free of snow and wind,” she said.
“Look,” Maybelle said. “Boats!”
There were indeed three in the river. Two canoes and one larger metal-hulled fishing boat, looking worn out but still clean and well maintained. It had a proper metal mast and sails billowing. Fishing lines came off it in half a dozen places.
The mother raised her spear.
A horn blew. I saw a teenage boy standing on the bow of the big boat, wearing nothing but a vest of fishing net, blowing a ox horn.
The teenage girl’s ears went scarlet, and she whispered something to her mother.
“Are you close?” Maybelle said.
She blushed so hard even her arms turned crimson. “Yes,” she said through her clasped hands.
“Aw,” I said.
“Awww,” the little ones took up the cry. Whereupon the poor girl clamped her hands over her face and her mother had to put an arm, laughing, around her shoulders and lead her on.
The River People village stood at a bend in the river. Every building was raised on stilts over the river. They were small, but solid houses. Except for the two large, windowless buildings that had to be warehouses. The docks were tethered to stone bases, and actually floating on the river.
I shivered as I saw the river people. There was a line of teenagers being taught animal dressing by a rugged old man, carving up a bison.
I saw adults lounging on a balcony stretched between two houses, knitting. Younger children were running back and forth over the bridge, chasing a dog back and forth. The parents mended the stilts on the nearby houses while they passed a pipe around.
I shivered beneath my warm cape and shirt. The damn air caught my nerves and carried it back into my body. It froze my bones and made them ache.
Then the teenage girl took off at a run, lithe body racing across the mud and never sinking into it. My heart leapt into my chest. Maybelle squeezed my hand tight.
“Courage, my love,” she said. Then I pulled in and kissed my lips.
“Awwww,” the kids howled. I held her hand to my chest, over my heart, and closed my eyes to kiss her back.
I didn’t let go of her, because we were finally here. Life or death, we had carried each other, hand in hand, all the way here.
The steady babble of voices drove us apart. Dozens of river people were coming out. They were a generally hardened, stern people with few smiles between them. Their hair was usually short and if long, braided. Most were naked from the waist up despite the cold, showing off thin, but muscled bodies. They ate better than I did, and they all clearly worked hard. I shivered as they approached in a solid mass.
Maybelle threw her arm around me and I huddled under her wing as they closed. Their stares went straight past her to me.
Grandmother Inara whistled. Two large men leapt forward and snatched me away. Her fingers left scratches on me. Maybelle leapt for me but Inara kicked her good, healthy leg out from under her, then pinned an arm behind her back.
“Don’t hurt her!” I said and leapt forwards instinctively. They held me in place as they lashed my hands behind my back. Then they yanked back my cape and tied it around me so it pinned my arms to my back.
“Please,” I said and wrenched side by side. They answered by throwing me into the mud, then dragging me up to my knees. A spear was placed over my heart. The young woman holding it glared down at me from behind green facepaint.
“What are you doing?” Maybelle said.
“Judging him,” Inara said and applied more torque to her arm. Maybelle twisted against it and fell right on her skinny bad leg.
Inara caught her before she landed on it and hauled her up. “Idiot, you’re going to hurt yourself before you hurt me.”
I met Maybelle’s gaze and stared into her eyes in case I was going to die right now.
“Stop, he’s my prisoner not yours!” Mamluk shrieked and ran between us. One of the adults snatched her up and cradled her to the ground. She shrieked from in her grasp.
Then, just as quickly, the spear was removed. The young woman bowed her head, and stepped aside.
I saw a tall man, clad only in green paint and a necklace of fishbones. His face was decorated with white writing.
“What’s this?” he said.
“This one is a steel person,” Inara said and pointed at me. Maybelle shivered in her grasp.
He knelt in the mud and looked me in the eyes. Beneath the paint, he seemed to be fairly young with few worry lines, and a neat beard of brown hair. Except his stare was so intense I retreated before it.
“How did a lone steel person get here?”
“I brought him!” Maybelle cried out.
He swiveled on one knee to look at her. “Who are you?”
“Maybelle, from the Florida sandbar. I brought him up here to find a rivertalker so we can be bound,” she said.
“Why would I do that?” he said.
“I love him, and he wants to be a river person,” she said. The crowd hissed. I recoiled straight into my captors. Tears welled up in Maybelle’s eyes.
“He was nice to me,” Ben said. “We found them starving at a fire. Grammy sent me to test them and they hugged me and gave me food even though they were starving.”
“I only brought him back alive so you can judge,” Inara said.
He pivoted back around to look me in the eyes. “Why are you here?”
“To marry Maybelle and be with her forever,” I said.
“We don’t marry. Marriage is an old, artificial term. A ceremony that lost its meaning. We bind our souls together, before the river.”
“Yes that’s what I want. It’s been the two of us for three years now. A civilization of two. I don’t want to exist in this life or the next without her anymore,” I said. My eyes stung suddenly and I realized I was crying. Everything came pouring out. “The Steel People destroyed the world and they haven’t learned. I don’t want to be one of them, I want to vanish from their world.”
“Please,” Maybelle said. “If you kill him I will just walk into the river.”
Someone burst into laughter. The rivertalker spun to glare the offender into silence.
“Where are you from?” he said to me.
“Boston.”
“Really. That’s so far away, especially if you came from the flood coast and followed the river north. Why did you leave?”
“The seawall collapsed at Boston. I got swept away,” I said. “I know New York and Detroit and Pittsburgh are still inhabited and Canada’s still around,” I said. “That’s all.”
He scratched his chin.
“He found me strawberries. You all said strawberries had died at winter but he found them,” Benny said.
“What does that mean? He’s a dead weight,” Inara said.
“It means he’s better at finding strawberries than you,” Ben said.
“Silence,” the rivertalker said. He remained crouched, his gaze peeling open my skin and staring into my soul beneath. He grabbed my by the chin and lifted my head. I remained fixated on his eyes in terror as he turned my head side to side. “You’ve been starving for a while,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Why were you traveling in the winter?”
“We found one of your canoes that was washed downstream. We were paddling up river to return it when steel people attacked us and stole the boat. My love broke her leg running from them. We had to stay in shelter until she healed,” I said.
“Our boat?” he said.
“Yeah, it was her cousin’s,” I said and looked at Inara.
Inara sighed. “Yes. They returned my dead cousin’s favorite hiking bag to us. And a blanket.”
The rivertalker nodded, then returned to me.
“So you took care of her?” he said.
“I went hunting and foraging while she prepared everything. We knew we’d be stuck traveling in winter,” I said. I shivered. He slackened his grip, then released it and placed his gentle hand firmly on my shoulder. Somehow, it steadied me.
“Where did the Steel people come from?” he said.
“The sky. They thought we were interesting and stole your boat,” I said. The crowd muttered amongst itself. The young woman looked to the sky, clutching her spear as if ready to throw.
“Did they recognize you?”
“As one of them?” I said.
“Yes.”
“I talked to them because they were hunting my love and I needed to distract them while she hid.”
“And what did they say?”
“They wanted to take me back, they said I was just a naked savage right now,” I said. The crowd erupted shouting.
“And you refused,” he shouted over them.
“I’ve seen what they did to the world. I’d rather ask forgiveness of nature,” I said.
Silence fell just as quickly. I heard my panicked, fast breathing.
His hand closed around my shoulder. I recoiled, but when he didn’t wrench me to the ground, I slowly relaxed back. Instead, he stroked my shoulder. “Fifty years ago, our grandparents were faced with starvation, and abandoned by the world of steel. They chose to kill each other for what was left. By the time they’d realized their mistake, only a few hundred were left out of a city of half a million. We did that. Not the earth.”
“I know,” I said.
“What would you do after binding with her?”
“Go on living. I don’t know where, but we will be together,” I said.
Maybelle nodded frantically. “Please,” she said.
“I will do it,” he said. He hauled me up to my feet. “I will lead this young man through the rite of souls. And if he emerges changed, he will be one of us.”
Mixed discussion from the crowd.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Keep the girl here. I will be back with either a reborn soul, or not,” the rivertalker said.
Inara released Maybelle, and each child took one of her hands.
He took me by the shoulders and steered me, unsteady and scared, through the village. Some of the crowd followed us at a distance, walking under houses on either side while others took the streets. They were sturdy homes with steep roofs of thatch and large windows. The flooding stains went up past my waist on the stilts, but the homes themselves were bright and dry. And colorful. The walls were painted with blue rivers, red and green swimming fish, seals, and much more I didn’t have time to digest as my legs carried and the rivertalker steered.
Then we reached the the river, lined with floating docks. There was a single home in the water, struts holding it aloft. Its bottom had a flat platform. He steered us right towards it
We stepped into the water and I shivered as it bit into me. It rose past my knees and I looked around warily for deep dark pits.
It was waist deep when we reached the plaform. He grabbed me under the elbows and helped me up like I was a small child, then leapt up in a single explosion of water.
Then he opened a hatch in the center of the boat house. I saw a ladder, and wooden boarding caulked with tar. He unwrapped my cape and untied my hands. I remained frozen, staring into the dark hole ringed in sunlight.
“I inspect the boards daily. It has been dry down there for twenty years, since my father’s time,” he said. “Go first.”
I didn’t look down. I climbed into the darkness and soon could barely see my hands and the rungs I guided them to. I heard the river washing against the boards as I went. The hatch was a square hole high above when my feet hit solid ground.
He followed me down, then fumbled with a light.
An electric lamp flared to life. I was in a dry, cozy rectangle. The floors were carefully swept boards, the walls decorated by a winding blue river amongst the green and yellow landscape. At the center, stood an altar of wood and around the outside, a series of cabinets.
“This is where you talk to the river?” I said.
He ripped open a cabinet and took out a plastic container. “Breathe in deeply,” he said.
I did so. He threw a green powder into my face and I sucked it in. Then I doubled over coughing on it.
The river rumbled in my ear. I stopped short. I could hear it swirling around, flowing eternally past on its long trek towards the Dallas coast. I could smell every type of flower in the perfume. And I felt so incredibly warm.
“Its…”
“Alive, yes,” he said. Then he grabbed me and pushed me down over the altar so my chin touched the wood. Something sharp pressed to my throat.
I froze. Then in a split second, decided that fighting was pointless. He held it there for a few seconds.
“Correct answer,” he said. “We’ve learned that to fight nature is impossible.” He released me. Then blew out the torch.
I stood in complete darkness, crushed by the millions of gallons of water rumbling past. “Do you know the story of Florida?”
“Yeah. It was billed as a paradise and many flocked there. Then the first hypercane hit. Maybelle’s people are the grandchildren of the handful who survived.”
“Exactly. That is why we are the river people. Here, Florida, the shattered plains of California, we all turned on each other first. And we the survivors learned better. To not treat our survival as a victory we must win over others, but just a part of life.
“When I fell in the river, the current wanted to drown me,” I said. “If Maybelle hadn’t jumped in I’d have died.”
“I didn’t say you needed to follow the current forever,” he said and chuckled. “I just said survival is part of life, and we need to celebrate more,” I said.
I thought it over. “I was worrying about her injured leg,” I said. “Except, I’d already saved her from the steel people. So, we helped each other.”
“You brought each other here. That is worth more than survival,” he said. “Remove the shirt.”
I did so. “Do you wear night vision goggles or something?”
“No. Don’t worry about that,” he said. His fingers smeared cold and wet paint over my face. Strong spices burned through my nostrils and I winced as my head caught fire.
“Stay strong,” he said. “You want to be one of us. You need a new name. Have you thought of one?”
“Michael,” I said.
“Why?”
“I just like it,” I said and laughed. Then he burst into laughter. I retreated a step and stumbled into the altar. The river swirled around me.
His sturdy arms caught me and righted me. “Very well.” He painted something across my chest. “Do you know what happens when we bind people?”
“You tie the new couple’s hand together with fishing line and they stay together for about a month. To prove they can last through anything,” I said.
He laughed. “I’m sure that’s how they did it in Florida. Here we have our own method. You will both be painted white. The paint cannot be washed off, and it takes a month usually to wear off. That time, you will be side by side. It’s about trust in a different way. Do you understand?”
I thought it over. “Does making love wear it off faster?”
Laughter exploded from him. “I’ll let you and your beloved learn through experience. Now come. To the surface.”
I had to clamber hand over hand. Every rung I stopped short and listened to the river. At different depths it had different pitches, getting higher as I got towards the square of light. I emerged and the wind rushed past my ears at a completely different frequency. I had to stop a second and breathe in. Then I emerged.
I saw her standing on the shoreline. A small line of river people were watching. The rest had returned to their daily work. A pillar of smoke was rising from the central platform.
I leapt off the boathouse and splashed towards shore. Maybelle met me in knee deep water and threw her arms around me. Her heart hammered against mine. Her short hair tickled my cheek.
Somewhere in my bliss, Inara seized both of us and pushed us towards shore. “You two fools are going to catch the flu in the water.”
Soon as we were on dry ground, she wrapped a blanket around us. Not one of ours, but a new, clean one that immediately warmed us up. Maybelle dropped to her knees and we clutched each other close.
“What is your new name?” she said.
“Michael,” I said. I kissed the top of her head.
Inara led us back to her home. She had a cylindrical water reactor in her apartment, worn out but clean and well maintained. It powered a water pump connected right to the river and a heater she used to boil stew, and heat water for us.
“You will bathe. Then the children. You are to be bound together and will start your lives clean,” she said.
“We’ve been bathing on the trail,” I said.
“Yeah we know how to make soap,” Maybelle said.
“Good. Then I won’t need to show you how to wipe your bottom,” she said.
As we wiped each other down, I heard them running around elsewhere in the home, the children shouting, cooking pots clanging in the next room, and a couple young men going past, carrying first food, then a couple boards.
We finished and wrapped our capes around ourselves. We looked around. There was a lovely wooden couch covered in folded furs. I shrugged, and we sat down together.
“I heard the river,” I said.
She grinned at me and kicked her legs up and down, heels tapping on the wood boards. “He took you into the heart of the river, the one way any of us could experience without drowning. When I kneel in the water and pray, it’s to hear what you just heard.”
“I think he gave me a drug, or something because I could hear everything more intensely. When I got out, I heard your heart.”
She nodded and flushed. “Yes, such is the work of the rivertalker. He communicates, by any means necessary. And now we can be together.”
I nodded. I just felt dizzy, and I was keen to let her do the thinking. “Want to stay here?”
“Even after they tried to kill you?” she said.
I nodded. “I feel comfortable here.”
She closed her eyes in thought. “Yes. I agree. Let’s stay here awhile.”
The two kids emerged, each carrying a bowl of steaming stew. They placed them in our laps where they were warm.
“For you,” Mamluk said.
“Our prisoners,” Ben said.
“Hey. We’re not your prisoners anymore,” I said and smirked at them.
Ben wrinkled his nose. Mamluk pointed a finger in my face. “You’re right, now you’re our slaves.”
We burst into laughter.
“Now I command you to eat and be happy!” Ben said and jumped up and down.
“Yes master,” Maybelle said and I giggled with her.
The children insisted they ordered us to rest, but we helped them sweep the house and clean the walls. Only then did we curl up on our couch and drift off to sleep in the orange glow of the setting sun.
When I awoke, the moon shined straight through the window onto my sheets. I rolled over, found I was alone, and sat straight up.
“Shh,” Inara said and I jumped. “You’re to be bonded now. She is making her own vows with the river talker.”
I nodded.
I laid a bucket of white beside me. “Time to prepare yourself.”
The entire family helped paint me white. It was sticky, but they assured me it would dry quickly. I was bundled in my cape and hurried downstairs.
We went back to the rivertalker’s house. I saw him standing there, Maybelle beside him in a circle of incense candles. She was so white she shined in the moonlight. A necklace of bear teeth was around her neck, and a band of pink around her left wrist. She was ethereal.
I stood before her, and breathed in. I caught a fine scent and my mind began to swim. I heard her breathing quicken.
I knew what to do immediately. I stepped into the circle with her. She extended both hands, and I locked us together.
“We come here, to bind these two young souls. Two who have fallen in love so deeply they wish to take it into eternity, beyond all limits of disease, starvation, time, distance, and death,” the rivertalker said. “The river runs eternally and may it carry their souls to safety.”
He drew out a bowl and wrote in yellow across our shoulders. They were little birds flapping. “Tell me, do you wish to swim together, eternally?”
“Yes,” Maybelle burst out.
“Yes,” I said softly. I heard both our hearts hammering like drums together.
“Good. Now kiss, and confirm forever.”
We did so. Applause showered on us.
I took her down the river until the town was a cluster of lights. I laid my cape down and took her down to our knees on it. We were aglow in the moonlight. The river lapped by our toes, blessing us with every gentle lap at the shore.
She fell on her back, then pulled me down atop her. We’d made love many nights before, but this time I saw the moon reflected in her eyes and shining against her hair. The smile on her lips went something deeper. We were aglow, and all the world was at peace and beautiful for us.