Sarahribu

(A special double-length story! I’ve been working on this for a while. And by while I mean 4 days)

And so it came to pass that the seas did rise, for even the church leaders declared that God probably would not save us for what we had done to ourselves. The cities of the world did not crash or scream so much as whimper and write letters to the editor. On the whole the people filed out, two by two back into the countryside, clutching teddy bears and pet carriers, talking animatedly to friends, then gazing back with empty eyes, salt-stone faces and dimly violent smiles at the lives they left behind.

The United Kingdom, noted throughout history as a contrary, weather-obsessed isle, managed to muddle through without drama (and with a fair amount of grumble about the lack of drama, because what is the point of being weather obsessed if there isn’t some headline generating drama), and so almost without incident over the century waterways replaced roads, gaily daubed traditional canal boats with cable television and wireless internet became the ‘new’ aspirational brand for the middle classes who read the right newspapers, and altogether it was all a bit of an anticlimax.

At this unspecified time in the future, in the Northern Historical City ™ of York, a young woman named Katherine punts her boat through the desolate canals. It’s the summer of her independence and armed with the fresh self-important flush of exam results, a pocketful of historical anecdotes on laminated crib sheets, a striped shirt and impressive upper arms, she takes to the flooded streets to try and forge a living on the waters. It’s battered and a bit damp, but the Gunhild is her baby, bought with her earnings from her now distant Saturday job selling scratch cards and cigarettes to the sheepish parents of her school friends, hiding their petty vice in their handbags as they duck back into the rain.

Its hard not to live in the city of York and not become a little saturated in history right down to your genes, and Katherine is a little bit obsessed in the forgotten oddness of the past, and at the same time a little bit jaded and frustrated by the breadth of knowledge needed to join the scrabble for tourist custom and dime.
The water had been high for a long time by the time she was born, the streets that were once full of revellers, buskers, shoppers and dreamers now obfuscated by dingy water, the poetry in the ripples punctuated with the gaping faces of abandoned cans. Remade in the image of a perfect tourist town once more, she is fascinated by the mundanity still visible on a clear day, the chewing gum marks and the little glass indentations from promotions long forgotten. It gives her a thrill, the thrill of amateur archaeology at the swish of a pole, more personal and fascinating than waterlogged Romans, Vikings and Vampires.

Tourist money is easy pickings, even in a city as waterlogged as York. While there are at least four separate gondolier girls with licences and a couple who manage a week or so at a time without, Katherine still manages to grab her first family the day she starts. They are all smiles and politely balance on Gunhild’s rickety seats, whilst Katherine’s babble is nervous and her punting largely inexpert at the unexpected weight. The father gives her a substantial tip and lascivious wink as he steps off at the boat terminus. She manages to get safely under Ouse Bridge before she retches overboard into the dark waters.

Happily though, by the end of the week she has her patter and route down. Drifting by the raised platforms in the square in the heat of the afternoon sun, it is a perfect day, not a cloud in the sky. She hears the cacophony of young voices raised in competition, promising tours at the best price, young men and women in historical costumes of varying degree of accuracy, promising bigger and better secrets than the competition. One stands out, a tall adolescent on wading stilts in a cheap frock coat and a top hat both too shiny and too small to be allowed on top of the shocking shock of ginger hair. His voice is clear with a Northallerton lilt and he’s promising the world, the juice, the savvy to the customers with their dollars, a self-satisfied smirk in the direction of the punters looking jealously on as he strides between them like an oversized bird. He is the Amazing Elli, Proprietor of Olde Fashionede Victorian Ghost Tours (est. 1997). Katherine is instantly, overwhelmingly in lust.

Night falls, and like most of the city’s functioning poor she lives under the waterline, in reinforced centre flats that are mainly safe and mostly dry. She docks by her front door with the only mariners’ knot she knows and glances up, convinced on a balcony above she sees a glimpse of ruffled ginger hair vanish behind the sun.

She is surprised how easily she takes to her new career. Cutting a smooth line through the black water more heads turn as she passes through on her way back to the terminus, her silhouette promotional picture perfect bar the unsightly bulge of the dollars and euros in her pocket. After a month she is the most profitable water-based tourist operative on the Ouse and Foss, and the dreadlocked boys in the bar she deposits the more fashionable of her customers in name a drink after their favourite girl, a sickly sweet honey rich concoction, a beautiful burnished gold that slips down the throat with a sensuous grace. Back at her flat she sits on the porch, feet dangling into the murky depths, and practices her spiel to no one in particular.

“Gunhild was married to the most powerful man in the Danish kingdoms, Eric Bloodaxe, whose name I imagine loses much in translation. Beautiful as a queen should be, fiercely intelligent, far more so than her husband, she was also a witch, which was a good career move for a woman in a position where young pretty things could be dab hands with a poisoned chalice.

Her beloved husband was king of York and a man of large ego, and so when a young poet upstart called Egal started spreading rumours back in the old country that Eric was ineffectual and impotent and all things men find most hurtful, the king pleaded privately with his wife to intervene. Gunhild was a smart woman, smarter than most, and so she placed a curse on Egal that meant if he took to the seas he would be deposited into her husband’s grasp. When news of this reached Egal, he scoffed in disbelief, took to the seas, and came-to staring at the point of the king’s men’s swords on a stormy Yorkshire shore.

Eric was ecstatic to have his enemy bought to him, but he prided himself on not being publicly ruthless, and so allowed Egal one night to prepare to argue for his freedom. All night Egal sat in his cell, trying to think of a reason not to be put to death. Every time he thought he had a thread of a thought, the fluttering plumage of a golden bird sitting outside distracted him. This was of course the queen, who mastered transfiguration at a very young age, and by the time the sun rose and the bird queen glittered her distracting dance a final time, Egal realised what he must do.

Standing dishevelled in the courts the next morning, there was a hushed silence, and Egal took a deep breath and launched into a poem, a most brown nosing and declarative love poem that was ever improvised on death row. The king sat in shocked silence at the end, and then finally, a tiny emo tear slipped down his cheek, as there is nothing kings like more than being praised, he granted Egal his freedom, as long as he walked the kingdom speaking that exact same poem in praise of Eric. Egal agreed, and there was much manly hugging in the court that morning.
With a glitter in her eye, the queen cast a final spell, binding Egal’s speech to those few words he spoke in praise, so he would never be able to speak ill of the king again.”

Rounding a corner on Swinegate a few days later Katherine is returning back to the terminus when she hears the beautiful northern vowels of the Amazing Elli. Her crush had gone un-nursed for many weeks at this point, as Elli was rarely to be seen for more than a few minutes at the terminus, and he never hung out with the other tourist trappers at the skanky bars. It was probably for the best, as without the bitching about Elli they would be stuck for conversation topics and be stuck sitting in polite silence drinking bad beer. She drifted through the streets and was barely listening when they came face to face and she heard it, what he was saying to his tour of adoring visitors. It was her words he was so earnest with! Her story, her boat’s tale of magic and glittering birds that she knew were not in the original! They were close now, and he was smiling disarmingly at her. She smiled sweetly when their eyes met and when she got close enough, stuck out her pole and swept his feet out from under him, not bothering to look back as he fell with an undignified splash.

The shocked gasp-laughter of the tour was the music to her ears as she punted elegantly off.

August came around faster than relativity should allow and the edict came down from the council that the season would be over on the 31st, rather than the 10th September that was the traditional dates they would shut the gates and bar the bars. It was a bittersweet sadness for Katherine had become used to her life of being top of the heap, her sabotage and reclaiming of her story from the Amazing Elli had led her to boldly take his prime place in the terminus, and so for the few last days of summer she was the queen and Gunhild, sailing triumphant on artificial shores.
She chooses not to go to the final party, at least not early. Instead she pushes her boat out into the calm torrent of the river, staring down past drowned trees to the glorious sunset and lets loose, feels herself let go of the tension in her weary arms, pole clattering down as she lets Gunhild drift.
She’s woken from her delicious reverie by a shout. Looking up, she is of course surprised to see the Amazing Elli, resplendent in tailcoat and the glinting expense of his cuffs and studs in pure white shirt. He smiles, not the knowing smile of the story-thief, but a more normal, mortal smile. She watches him, fascinated as he leans over the bridge, a graceful somersault of black clothes and ginger hair, and kisses her. It’s a proper kiss, grown up; it stands up and speaks for what it wants, the kiss of someone who knows you, even though they’ve barely spoken. He ghosts a phrase she can’t hear for the rushing of blood in her ears, and then there’s a thud and Elli, no longer amazing, drops into her boat and knocks her backwards with a choreographed ease, like he has done this throughout history, throughout time. He looms over her, his grin wide and beautiful and she can see other people’s lives flash before her eyes, not costumes like those cheap and waterlogged by the pier or the smart and perfect like in the history texts, but the ordinary lives they have led before, scuffed sneakers and well worn cottons that sneak through mundane history.

Later, its in orange shimmering light of the final sunset of the season that she delights in the prickle and chafe of his false moustache, until he rips it off like a television villain and for the last time for the summer she feels her body and boat swell with the pull of the summer tide.

So its always important to get back onto the camel when you fall off! Sometimes I think this domain is cursed, I’ve never managed to do anything particularly useful with it. I was doing fine for a while though, and then I replaced the battery in my iPod and suddenly realised I was getting all my ideas when I was walking to and from work. It’s actually very difficult to both walk and sing along to banging tunes whilst writing a thousand words in your head. I can do two, but not three, and music is always the easier. I feel cheated by my gender; surely I should be able to multitask like a rock star, but perhaps not before the coffee kicks in.

Anyway, I have a few things to post that I have written that fall a little under the limit, including some meta-meta pornography that I wrote half asleep, and I need to write the outline for the first story in my proposed ‘York Myths Series’, which mostly seem to be anthropomorphised love stories to my city. Now I’m going to saddle up that metaphorical quadruped and get back to it.

Oh! Emancipation of the body does not equal that of the mind. I may have a salary and pay my way in the world but a Sunday is a Sunday is a Sunday, and I wake nervous my Mother will yell and tut for my deadly sinful habit of gluttonous sleep. But my mother isn’t here, I’m a modern girl with a house and bills and housemates who would never violate the sacred space. Privacy is the main currency of shared living, something I have never been very good at. At school everyone knew of my gossiping tendencies, and I used to follow any thread that sounded interesting with a ‘what-what-what-what?’ badgering poor girls until I knew their crushes and secrets, which I could then attempt to sell on the open market for a modicum of cool. I’m older now, sneakier, but sometimes the gossip hound resurfaces, crass and awful and greedy for illicit knowledge.

I have a childish craving for pancakes. I made them a lot as a young teenager, my party piece for making parents proud, breakfast in bed on a sleepy Sunday, tropical sunlight and lush greenery against good old-fashioned crepes Francais, mais oui, c’est delicious. I shouldn’t have them for the sake of thighs, but this is what emancipation is about, doing the things that are bad for you with no one to answer to but you.

They are gelatinous in the middle, and my tea is cold by the time I’m done, but I can only eat them with relish, or at least with syrup and lemon. Defeated, I retreat to the whirlwind. My housemates dominate the rest of the house, but this is my corner. With each iteration phase of my life the space I occupy gets smaller as my dreams become grander. It is as if the space around me contracts as I aspire, so will I live in a singularity once I am truly successful? The cleanliness I practice outside of it; carefully clean plates and neatly stacked game boxes, shoes squared by the toes next to the door, makes the horror behind it all the more distressing, I live like a chaos junkie, everything askew, piles everywhere atrocious and distressing. It makes me tired, but facilitates useless sleep, fetid dreams of quiet fiction lives and broken electronics taunt me before I wake, stepping on things that go crack in the night, slamming the door behind me to hide my shame and trap the chaos within.

But it is Sunday, and that is the habitual day of cleaning that maybe later in life will become traditional, folding and hiding and smoothing away my possessions so I can ruin it all again during the week when my head is mad with tiredness and I throw things into piles past caring. There are plastic cartons in plastic bags I have been meaning to recycle and expropriate from the trash, but today I feel failed by my ambitions and I lose a few hours in a book and new feather pillows, calming the anxiety by turning my face away and into a swamp world. When I arise later, the girl in the mirror has her girlishness disguised as a column, patterned cotton extending the swell of my hips to the floor. The writhing of my near-sleep have taken my hair and whipped it to a red crumpled storm, as per usual. My friends and lovers who have shared my bed tell of nights where I by turn mumble and enunciate unspoken desires, working my head into frenzy in the cheap softness of my pillow. I wake to find again an impression of Einstein staring back at me, eliciting laughs when I stumble onto the cold tiles of the kitchen for the morning’s infusion and satiation.

For all of this I am a pretender to the art of the sleepy weekend. I boast loudly when questioned about it, claiming a past of hedonism and obscene lumps of mouth-watering meats and cocktails prepared in the tradition of the Empire. In fact, I am a pale pretender to the crown my Father will never relinquish, for he is a man with a ruined liver whose main love in life has always been making people happy through the application of spirits and bawdy jokes. It was years before I realised his childhood stories about ghosts were really about alcohol, because children are inherently more open to speaking of the spirit world than adults, who are wise to wordplay. A sign of the loss of innocence is the sudden understanding of puns. I fail to cook properly, manage a few seconds of blissful relaxation with the paper before something in my head whirrs into action and I clamber for a pen and paper, a line stray in my mind that maybe might be the key to my eventual salvation, but by the time it has evaporated and I cannot relax again.

Instead my weekends left to myself are like dreams in themselves, unstructured parries of neurosis and accomplishment that ultimately are for naught by the time the alarm sounds Monday morning, and I drag my feet from their warm cocoon into the real world. I force oxygen to push down the anxiety that bubbles, cauldron-like behind my lungs. I pound away the worries with water pressure and floral suds. I slip my now-cool feet into plastic dreamboats and drag a brush through Einstein, banishing him for a day.

The horizons are empty, but that really is nothing new. He would take anything these days, a burnt out shack, a bundle of thorny brush, a half eaten carcass picked over by vultures. Locking his rifle above his head, Maram strikes a severe line against the endless frozen tides of the desert. His glasses were small and hyper functional to counteract the sand-blindness that had blighted him for far too long since leaving the city to try and eke out an unnatural extension of his life on the sands.
Bell is his trusted steed, glorious and awkward all the same. Camels were slaughtered and eaten in the cities where they no longer have any use for beasts of burden, but plenty of use for large slabs well exercised of protein for the weak limbed kids blighted from the heartbreak of millions. The cities are like animals, anthropomorphised by the half-dead souls rammed into every crevice. Life has always been hard in the desert, in the black tents that billow like storm clouds that a long way back he assumes his ancestors lived in. Camels always make it easier.

Every day the world slips just a little further away from him. His past life, with lovers and meals and eyesight, where he never had to put his shoulder back in joint because the kick from the rifle was too much stress for it to take. He cannot see if there was a rabbit on the horizon anymore, but having its present bulk, tricked out with addendums to the stock and the muzzle to make it easier, the brass still gleaming thanks to his constant handling, a solid metal security blanket against the monsters in the night.

The nights out here are a punch to the chest. The sun descends into its bed exactly as it has since the start of history and the darkness rises, but if it is your first night in the desert you would be forgiven if you found yourself overwhelmed. There was a time where the desert was the last place on earth you could see the beauty of the night sky, and at that time there was a hope that maybe having hope wasn’t a useless human folly. Thousands were still there as the last of the stars seemed to shudder before they were sliced out of existence as the now omnipresent sheath rolled over, the sky is now ribbed for no stargazer’s pleasure, possible astrologers forever silenced.

He huffs laughter to himself. Every omnipresent cloud of death and destruction has a silver lining.

He used to read horoscopes waiting for his sister in the doctor’s office. She was ill a lot, her pale hand weighted down with the jewellery her husband would buy her, shiny baubles to preserve his dying love. The doctors could do nothing, and eventually the money ran out, the jewellery taken away and pawned for more medicine that made no difference, and his sister was buried swiftly, an unpreserved body in a unprepared grave.

The cold, after the oppressive heat of the day, never stops being sudden, shocking and a stealer of the breath a man holds dear. He is back now, his scarred corneas show the black behemoth of his home.

Dismounting with a exuberance and flair aimed only for the invisible onlookers that make up the omnipresent pressure of there being someone in the room, Maram grins at the nothingness and ducks inside the tent. His meagre possessions are spread out uselessly, in piles; the cacophonograph plays music loudly and distortedly, spurred on with an affectionate kick, pitch bent beyond repair as the needle scratches across warped disks. With no chance of a replacement you get used to the mocking pastiche of music. You have to.

Bell huffs outside, trotting in circles and grunting. Maram ignores her for now, and digs his daily bread out of the sand oven. Even the small amount of flour he has left now is nearly all sand, nutrition a hollow word from a time when the people always could get something to top up what they didn’t like to eat, when people had glossy hair and perfect white teeth. Hair, teeth and nails, the first things to go, the last things you would have thought you’d missed.

They have got so far today. Bell is so beautiful, a reassuring tower of strength and understanding but he can feel her tired and starting to break, the burden of taking him half way across the world taking its toll on such a magnificent beast. He goes outside and examines her, the light dim but just enough to see her sad eyes with their caramel lashes flutter at his touch. They are linked, his magnificent steed, linked through their shared blood matted in her fur from travel and the tracks of her tears. He touches her wounds and massages feeling back into her tired legs and sings to her simple songs of famous love and the purity of childhood, until his own eyes grow heavy with sleep and he drifts off pressed against her solid, still labouring bulk.

He passed the skeletons of other men fleeing the cities as they clawed their way out of hell. There is a radius of bones around the major metropolises, the first few miles they are smaller, more delicate, the initial burst of the unprepared. As you get further away you hit the bodies of the men and their horses, mules, sweet donkeys liberated from beachfronts. The whips and chains lay testament to the breaking points of man and beast.

He tries not to think too hard about what the camel skeleton he saw a few miles back means for him. Bell grunts impatiently as he gulps down water, the two of them swathed in once-white fabric to keep off the haze of the morning sun. He loads her aching back with apologetic whimpers and clicks at her to head off, the horizon unbroken all the way until the end.