“They get cold. There’s no warmth there. So the core is kind of icy. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. I get creeped out once it gets too dark to see.”
We are walking back now, and I feel much better for it.
“Is there anything else I need to know?” I ask the question conversationally, feeling much relieved.
“Stay out of the forest unless someone’s with you. If the birds stop singing, you need to run.”
“Why?”
“There’s demons in there, innit,” she says, stuffing an extra piece of cheese she must have snuck away in her clothes into her face. “Sometimes girls go missing. You’re young, and pretty. Just their type.”
“So stay away from falling refrigerators, and away from forest demons. Two very different kinds of threat,” I say.
She snorts a little. “There’s other threats too. Not much medicine down here. We’ve got what the trees and flowers give us, but it’s not like what’s up above. All we have is ourselves and each other down here.”
“Are you mad at the floating people?” The question just pops into my head, maybe because of the way her upper lip curls slightly when she mentions anyone or anything in the floating cities.
“Them up there think they’re above all this. They might be physically, but they’re the same kind of animals we are. But we down here? We know what life really is. And them up there? They suffer every breath they draw.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Sometimes they throw people down. If we see them coming, we try to catch them. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t. But the ones we do catch, they tell us what life is like up there, and it’s not worth living, I can tell you that. The ones that come here take years to be like us, if they ever fit in at all. It’s not the same up there. Everyone’s taught that nothing matters except themselves. But to survive here, you’ve got to care about each other.”
That’s the wisest thing anybody’s ever said to me, I think. It’s one of the few things I actually remember anybody saying, but there’s still a lot of truth in it.
Over the coming weeks, it’s what I live by. It’s easy too, because Seeker and Vani and Charger are all so nice to me. The fact that I don’t know who I am becomes pretty irrelevant as we are all meeting for the first time, and it’s what I do that counts.
I like to gather berries and mushrooms. I don’t always know which ones are edible, but Seeker does, and Charger is an excellent cook and hunter. The four of us girls live an idyllic life. We wake up when the sun wakes up, and we go to bed when the embers of the fire die down. Life is simple, repetitive, and satisfying.
“Where’s Seeker?” Charger comes to the hut carrying an arm full of cords. The sky people must have been throwing a lot of good stuff off the edge lately. I’ve never gone back to that shadow land. It freaked me out the first time enough for me to never return. Charger is braver than I am.
“Dating Dart, I think,” I say.
There’s a clearing in the woods not far from the village, a place where men and women who want to mate go to, well, mate. It’s a very pretty location, were wildflowers grow in bright red and yellow clumps and willow trees spread their long boughs in sort of natural curtains between themselves and the river. I don’t go there either, for the exact opposite reason I’m not going to the shadow place. Some places are too bad. Some are too good. I like a comfortable medium place.
Charger snorts, sits down, and starts unraveling the interior of something she says are called VHS tapes. They’re ancient tech, she says. Real ancient. I have no sense of time, so that doesn’t mean anything to me.
“Dart,” Charger sneers. “He likes to get around.”
“So does Seeker,” Vani says.
They’re gossiping, but that’s part of village life. All we really have for entertainment purposes are each other. People who do interesting things are usually quite popular. It’s fun to have opinions on things people do.
Seeker is dating Dart, one of the hunters who live in the common house. He’s a cute guy with a blond mustache and broad shoulders he can sling a small deer over without problem. He’s very tall, and very handsome, and he likes to daub himself with animal blood under the full moon. Who doesn’t.
I haven’t been interested in any of the men. I don’t know why. Vani thinks it’s because of something in my past that I can’t remember. She’s probably right. I feel pressure from my memories sometimes, like they’re pushing at a membrane insidemy mind that just won’t let them through. I don’t know how to dissolve it.
“You should drink the brew,” Vani says, apropos of nothing.
“What brew?”
“The dream brew,” she says. “We make it from a vine that grows in the forest. It gives you visions. It might help you remember things.”
“Hm. Maybe I should,” I say.
“It also makes you sick. From both ends,” Charger says, raising a brow. “And sometimes people die. Not often, but sometimes.”
“Okay, I’m feeling significantly less interested,” I say.
