The Nothing Within Read online

  All 3 of our horses stolen Tuesday. No other livestock yet.

  Eli’s staying up all night with my Remington, hoping to scare off looters. He’s keeping Josiah and Atlee with him so they can watch while he naps. They’re young, but he says they need to. He’s teaching them about my Remy, though I don’t think he really knows how it works.

  It’s a blessing we’re sleeping separate.

  Mother ewe had three lambs a week and a half back. All three lived. Seems such a small thing with all the rest happening, but the children were pleased.

  2

  February 16, 2163

  Forgot to count the birds.

  Lord, please protect us.

  Murky all day, every day since the Reckoning. We just get a thin, reddish light most days. Daylight doesn’t warm up the night’s cold as it should. Brown ash tops the standing snow. Just observing. Not complaining.

  The Reckoning. Folks call it that. Sun to darkness, moon to blood.

  Have spoken with other people a few times now, menfolk from other families who’ve come to check in on us and see what news we have. None worth sharing. Nobody seems to know what happened, except what we already knew: that everything modern stopped working, all at once and everywhere, so far as anyone can tell.

  Ezekiel Schrock had the idea of visiting the tooLow in Berlin. Not to loot, of course, he said. Goodness, no. Just to take anything that nobody else was using. Apparently, others went for the same reason. He and his sons, Jacob and Little Zeke, didn’t get very close before someone started throwing rocks and broken glass, and not just to scare them off, either. Little Zeke was wounded badly in the arm. Gone to fester despite what care his family could give. Might have to take it off.

  Would be good to see Dr. Habib making visits, but I suppose he’s seeing after his own, wherever he is.

  Most people just see after their own now. But we plain people do what we can to look in on our neighbors when we’re able. Seems the Christian thing to do. Selma Troeger’s alone and quite elderly, so Wurthmanns have taken her in. Others have done similar.

  Eli works himself to exhaustion with his nighttime rounds and watches. Sleeps during the day when he lets himself. I think he’s out of numo. There’s probably nobody to buy drugs from anymore. They say numo has no addiction or withdrawal, but that’s not true. I can see he misses it. He hurts.

  As Eli’s preoccupied with protecting us, his chores are left for me and the children. The children do as they should. Josiah especially is becoming a man.

  At night I’ve been sleeping single. It’s restful despite the unusual circumstances. I’m weaving before bed even though I don’t need the excuse, what with Eli out on patrol. I don’t guess we need more cloth than we already have, but weaving lets me stop thinking about whatever’s looming tomorrow.

  Looming. That’s funny.

  3

  February 24, 2163

  Dear Lord, protect us.

  Woke last night to the sound of angry voices from the barn. Got myself as decent as I could as quick as I could. Ran out in the cold to see.

  It was the strays, the same three I gave bread to last month. They stood over a dead ewe, two of them soaked with the blood from killing her poorly. Thankfully not our new mother ewe. Still, a shame.

  Eli was in the barn pointing the Remy at them, yelling I don’t know what all. Some things that didn’t make a lot of sense, I guess. Feeling the lack of sleep and numo. The strays were back in a corner looking about ready to empty themselves onto the straw.

  Then there was a shot. Cooped up in that small space, felt like a slap to the head.

  One of the big pale ones did empty himself into his pants right then, and the little fellow went on his face and started bawling. At first, I thought Eli had shot him, but no. Later Eli told folks it was a warning shot. Truth is, he just plain missed. I’m not sure he’d shot a rifle before that moment.

  He steadied himself and brought the Remy up for a second shot, aiming at the fellow on the floor.

  I yelled “no” and grabbed the rifle right out of his hands. Just like that.

  Don’t know what got in me.

  He looked shocked instead of angry, though late last night there was time enough for his anger. But for that moment he just stared at me. So did the strays.

  I spoke to him like a misbehaving child. Told him I’d been raised against this kind of violence, just as he had. That we’d gone our lives without hurting another soul and there was no earthly reason to start now.

  Thought Eli might grab the rifle back and shoot me right there, but he was distracted, or confused. I could hardly believe it when he agreed. Said he didn’t suppose these lives were ours to take, or at least not without the community’s prayer and reflection.

  He tied them up well in the barn. It was cold there, but not too cold among the sheep. Though not comfortable, either. Eli said to leave them hungry. When he went to wash up and get ready for more patrolling, I snuck back to the barn and fed them some beans and cornbread left from supper.

  The big two just stared at me as they wolfed it down. The little one said thank you, looked about to cry again. I didn’t say anything back.

  Mutton for supper today. Whatever the reason for it, it was good to have meat for a change.

  4

  February 25, 2163

  Today Eli slept a couple hours after sunrise, then went on rounds to call up a gathering. By mid-afternoon, nearly every house in our church district had someone at our barn to listen, and a good number of English neighbors besides. The strays listened. We spoke English for their benefit.

  Eli led the meeting, explaining what happened and asking others what’s happened to them. Come to hear it, there’ve been plenty of other strays. People have fed some and driven off others. From his guilty look, Mel Yoder might have done worse than drive them off.

  Eli said we should put it to a vote what to do with our three, weighing their needs against our families’ in this hard and dangerous time, when hard decisions were needed for the good of the community. He sounded like he was being fair and even, but we all knew just what he was arguing for.

  All over again, I don’t know what got in me. I stood up and told them what I thought. Had to clasp my hands to hide their trembling, but I told them.

  Reminded them we’ve been welcoming people into our community forever, and especially since we started the Back to Simple marketing some thirty years ago. Said we’ve welcomed outsiders to become part of us, and that every one of them has been a good person. A few of them were even sitting in that barn in judgment.

  Reminded them of Galatians: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” And of John: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

  I said it seemed wholesome to make space and give folks a chance and get through hard times together. That kindness like this was what set us apart from the rest of the world. That it was part of living a proper life. That the rest of the world was turning on itself and we weren’t.

  Don’t suppose I’ve put together so many words at once in my life, nor so strongly. For a bit there, I wasn’t sure who I was.

  Folks did listen, though.

  We’ll welcome strays into our community, long as we can bear it. Each family will take some in as they show up. We’ll take these three. Teddy, Quint, and Marsh. Make them as comfortable as we can in the barn for now. We’ll find a way to make it work. Always do.

  Eli didn’t care for my words at all. He let me know that clearly tonight after the children were asleep.

  Worth it.

  Hope I’ve done the right thing. I do worry. Truth is, something about these fellows seems wrong. I’ve seen desperation, before the Reckoning and since. One kind of desperate is an emptiness that needs filling. The other kind is feral.

  The little fellow seems empty. The big two don’t.

  Even so. It’s the right thing to d
o. We’ll be judged by that in the end.

  Shepherd Gabriel

  1

  Shepherd Gabriel and the Humble Weaver

  Market didn’t have a wall.

  That wasn’t because its people were lazy or lacked the skill to make a wall. With few exceptions, Market was blessed with the finest artisans of any craft.

  Nor was it from a lack of stone or tools. Every village in the World That Is, from Muddy Bend to Nyehoff and Edge to Edge, cobbled together something like a wall, no matter the effort required to find its makings. Market had quarries of note, and tools of every description.

  Market didn’t have a wall. What market did have was shit. Prodigious quantities of shit. Pig shit, chicken shit, sheep shit, goose shit, and every other shit you can imagine, along with the shit of over forty-eight hundred human beings the last time shepherds took a census. And while no city or village lacked those things, somehow they seemed a more vital part of Market’s identity than could be explained by mere volume alone. Which was why, when adults discussed Market with other adults, they called it the Pile.

  Between the stench and the noise and the fires and the roaming watchers and the scurrying of so many people, even through the night, unwanted things generally avoided market, preferring the pickings in quieter, calmer, less noisome little villages scattered around the World That Is.

  When visiting Market, a shepherd trudged through the same shit as everyone else. Shepherd Gabriel walked down Market Way past bleating goats and moaning sheep and their drovers bellowing behind them. Walked past Home House, where Keeper Lisbeth would put up a traveler overnight for any fair gift: a quarter peck of corn, an armload of wool, a handful of pegs. Walked past the Yard, deep at the center of town, where traders mudded their thumbs and agreed, each of them trying to come out on the winning side of the exchange while appearing to be on the humble end of it instead.

  As the sun slipped toward the distant tree line, flies buzzing, he stopped at a tiny brick house near the center of Market, whitewashed as all the others were, but daring to show ornamentation on the lintel: an inset circle the width of Gabriel’s palm, with two bars through its center. The mark of a weaver.

  He’d looked on weavers’ houses like this one a hundred, hundred times through the weary years, but this one was different from the others. This little brick house was the very heart of the World That Is.

  He used his staff to scrape the shit from his feet as best he could, then he sat before the weaver’s door, legs crossed, and waited. It didn’t do to interrupt a weaver, least of all the Humble Weaver of the World That Is. He heard her mortar and pestle, smelled the bitter waft of alterwhite and husbandstongue, potent enough to cut through even the stink of Market, and knew she would be a while. That was all right. He had a while.

  As he sat, thinking of no particular thing, several people, by ones and twos, came walking or shuffling or limping up the street toward the little brick house, even so close to night. But seeing a shepherd on the stoop, they all went back the way they’d come, making as though that was what they’d planned all along.

  It didn’t do to interrupt a shepherd, either.

  After not quite an hour, the noises stopped and the herbal smells gave way to Market’s stench. Gabriel stood, brushed off his seat, and watched the door.

  Presently, it opened. A small, bent woman peered out. One of her eyes drooped nearly shut and the other was white with a cataract, her mouth a puckered void, her skull a day or two past smooth-shaven. She appeared to be well into her sixties; Gabriel knew she was a good deal older.

  She leaned forward and turned her head to the side as though listening for something. After a moment she nodded tersely. “Hunh,” she said, her voice like autumn leaves. “I wondered why no crowd was waiting on my stoop. Shepherd Gabriel.”

  “Humble Weaver,” he replied.

  The Humble Weaver turned slowly and shuffled back into the dimly lit room, leaning heavily on her staff. “Peace on you, and Grandmother Root smile upon you,” she said over her shoulder. “You are welcome here.”

  Gabriel followed her in and closed the door.

  If the single-room house seemed smaller inside than out, that was only because so very many things were in it. There was a clear path from the tiny bed to the tiny hearth to the tiny work table to the door. Every other inch of space, floor to ceiling, was teetering with jars and boxes containing every conceivable herb, root, and soil.

  “Chamomile?” she asked, carefully lifting one of several small pots from the coals.

  “That would be gracious.”

  “Hmh.” She poured one mug with hardly a splash despite her shaking arm. “You might not think so if I have grabbed the wrong pot.”

  Gabriel smiled, air whuffing from his nose, the nearest he came to laughter. “Out of pure politeness I was going to let you drink first,” he said. “But you’ve given me another reason.”

  The Humble Weaver nodded, then continued to nod as she poured the second mug. She sat on a little stool by the table and gestured at the other stool. “Perhaps I will call Willim in to taste it for us. But while it cools, we can talk.”

  He sat across from her, taking the mug to warm his hands.

  “How is time treating you?” he asked.

  “Are you here for a reason?”

  “I am.”

  “Then please use my ever-waning time for a reason, and not just to chat about time. For time is not my friend.”

  “A chimera,” he said.

  For the first time, the Humble Weaver looked directly at him, or near as she could through her milky eye. “Hmh.”

  “In the countryside not far from Ashland.”

  She thought about this for a moment before venturing another “Hmh.”

  “It killed a family at their farmstead last Saturday, outlying a half day’s walk from Ashland, then it took to living in their house. When a neighbor family came calling Sunday, it killed six of them, too. The youngest child ran off while the chimera was taking apart her parents and the basket of muffins they’d brought. Then it followed the girl to Ashland and menaced the village for the better part of a day, held off by their wall and their slings. Ashland’s runners managed to sneak past it and get to Market. The runners found Shepherds Sumiko and Theo in time. They dispatched it.”

  “The child?”

  He shook his head. “She was splashed with blood before she fled the chimera. No way to know whose blood, or what’s. Weaver Henna of Ashland took her to the Pit.”

  “Ah. Well.” The Humble Weaver sipped her tea. “Woe follows woe. At least it was a weaver. Better than in the chimera’s belly. Or worse.” She gave a whistling sigh. “Fourteen in eighteen.”

  “Fourteen in eighteen?” Gabriel asked.

  “Fourteen chimeras in the last eighteen years.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “But, oh, shepherd. We both know it sounds so very wrong.” She set down her mug and fixed him with another look. “Before I was chosen to be the Humble Weaver, I was simply Weaver Hope of Holyhock. Before that, I was Apprentice Weaver Hope. And—so long ago I can hardly believe there was such a time—I was just plain Young Hope. And to that little girl, chimeras were a story you heard from your grandma who had heard it from hers. And now? Nearly fifteen of Gebohra Muerta’s children in less than twenty years?” She clucked her tongue. “That such a thing would happen in my time.”

  “We’re trying to understand why. We’re looking for a pattern.”

  “A pattern.”

  “In the place, in the time, in the victims, in something. Anything.”

  “And how could this feeble husk of a weaver help the wise and mighty shepherds to find this pattern?”

  Shepherd Gabriel smirked. “Hope. In all the World That Is, a hog can’t fart without blowing in your ear.”

  She chuckled. “My proper name is ‘Humble Weaver,’ as you well know. And these ears no longer hear so well as they once did.”

  “Even so. I’m asking you to l
isten for rumors, or legends, or even lies that might lead us to the truth.”

  She took another long sip of tea, then sighed again and looked into the fire for a while. Finally she said, “Ashland. Holyhock. Littleford. Two near Muddy Bend. So many it’s hard to recall them all, but…” She sat silent for a moment, chewing on nothing. Then she shrugged. “The pattern is unclear to this dusty head. More toward the edges of the World That Is than the center, maybe.” After thinking for another moment, she patted the table. “I promise to share with you the glorious details of every hog fart. Even if you ask me to stop. If nothing else, I can speak of it with the other weavers when I’m able. And I promise to put what’s left of this withered, puckered mind toward looking for your pattern. Now unless I am much mistaken, you have let your tea go cold.”

  “I was waiting to see whether you died from it,” Gabriel replied.

  The Humble Weaver snorted. “Silly shepherd. This frail old thing might have keeled over for any of a dozen reasons, and then you would have wasted a perfectly good mug of chamomile.”

  She stood slowly and limped toward the door. “Now, if we have gotten past your reason for being here, drink it cold—serves you right—and I will call Willim to make us a little dinner. You are welcome to sleep on my floor tonight, if you can find it for all the clutter. But if you want a proper rest, you had best visit Keeper Lisbeth instead.”