Ecotones: Ecological Stories from the Border Between Fantasy and Science Fiction Read online

  We descended into a fissure, floating in the minuscule gravity to the mouth of a tunnel. The blue light grew brighter as we traveled under the surface. What light and heat this planet had, came from somewhere deep within. After a long time drifting, the tunnel opened into a vast space filled with translucent rubble. Sleek structures rose above the wreckage, fractured spires dotted with unlit windows. They spiraled toward the arched ceiling high above. The ground rumbled, quaking in a quiet, constant tremor. Even ruined, the place was beautiful.

  Creatures moved through narrow pathways cleared of glimmering boulders. Large, expressive eyes set into broad foreheads, their long necks widened into sleek bodies covered with a smooth pelt. We look like this, I thought. One turned to us, and the Silva thought of it as elder sibling. We proceeded together, drifting on little puffs of vapor toward the center of the settlement.

  The ground screamed and fissured. Chunks of ice drifted down from above as the earthquake flung us high into the air. We drifted back down in a lazy free fall. A large blue boulder fell toward us. I felt a surge of panic thinking of the weight and mass of something that size on Earth. It hit us with a gentle slap and pinwheeled away.

  The buildings did not fare so well. Another one tumbled slowly to the ground, glittering dust hung in the air. We waited until the rumbling subsided before moving on.

  We approached what looked like an immense tree. Thick branches twisted away from a deep purple trunk that emerged from the shattered ice below. The elder sibling stopped but we continued, drifting up to the trunk. The deeply grooved surface expanded and contracted in a kind of respiration. The Silva stretched out its long neck, pressed our forehead against the trunk and I felt them.

  Above us, many branches drooped with masses of bulbous fruits. The translucent skin of each revealed the curled body of a nascent Silva.

  A tree of life. I looked around at the other Silvas drifting among the broken buildings. They didn’t seem to care about the homes they’d lost, instead they floated like fish in a current, their eyes on the great tree. This was the last one I realized, and my breath caught at the sight of several blackened branches among the living ones, their fruits withered and dusty gray. The shifting ice at the base of the tree was crushing the root system.

  Above us, a living bulb detached, its leathery rind curling away. The newborn Silva stretched out as it floated down between us. The ground began to tremble again as we nuzzled the new sibling. There was little time.

  The three of us hurried back to the mouth of the tunnel, pausing only to invite elder sibling. Sadness. It refused to join us, instead pushing the little one closer to our flank. We turned away and moved through the tunnel and back across the surface, our pace slower so that little sibling could keep up.

  There was no Dogloo on this end, only a deep shadow between two shards of ice that exhaled the warm, stinking breeze from the unloved piece of land under the highway. We glided into the heat and were sucked though the blackness again to emerge, alone, in the dark.

  Next to us, a long strand of blue light coalesced on the rough pavement. Four paws appeared on the ground, fore and hind legs growing from them, then the knobs of a spine. A puppy solidified, clear as a block of ice and lit from within. The light faded as a coat of black fur covered it, black as the sky above their home world. She had brown almond-shaped eyes and alert ears.

  A bitch, I thought, though I didn’t know how I could know that without checking—something about her smell. The Silva responded with puzzlement.

  How to explain gender? I imagined a man and a woman standing next to each other, holding hands. That didn’t clear anything up, so, with a pang, I recalled the last time Hal and I were together in my apartment. I tried to follow that memory with an image of the infant Silva emerging from its pod as it drifted down from the tree.

  Of course, the pictures Hal had shown me of his children invaded my thoughts. The ones he’d had in his wallet all along. I don’t know if the Silva got what I was trying to convey. They’d figure things out eventually.

  The overpass above us was quiet with only the occasional long, slow swish of cars passing in ones and twos. It was maybe an hour before dawn. We headed back to the park along empty sidewalks. Somewhere, a garbage truck crushed its payload. The puppy trotted at our heels. We stopped at a battered metal trashcan that lay on its side to root through fast food wrappers, and gulped down the crescent remains of a burger. The cheese was the consistency and flavor of plastic, but there was a bit of meat. We kept digging, and found some broken French fries.

  A cat strolled up the sidewalk, a delicate creature with a tortoiseshell coat. Curious, the puppy leaned forward and dropped a French fry into the cat’s path. It demurred and kept walking, a little golden bell tinkling on the collar around its neck. The cat regarded us with slitted emerald green eyes as it strolled by, and I realized what the Silva already knew. Cats weren’t from here either. Who knew where they were from. All we knew for sure was that cats were well established, and that they were sharp.

  At the grove, we put our nose to the ground and followed the faint metallic-floral scent of my perfume until my face came into view, round and pale against the knuckled roots at the base of the shrubs that hid my body. My eyes were closed; my chest barely moved.

  The Silva slunk under the tangled branches and curled up against my cool body. The puppy huddled close, and we licked her face slowly and rhythmically with our warm tongue, bathing and calming her until she toppled over in an exhausted doze. We too closed our eyes at last.

  I opened my eyes and looked through the damp blades of grass, past the cast iron legs of the park bench, and across the surface of the water glittering in the morning light. The Silva lay spooned against my chest, cold, but not freezing.

  I sat up, blew hot breath onto my fingers and waited for yesterday’s bitter loneliness to catch up with me. The sun crested the tops of the buildings beyond the park, touching everything with an orange glow. So many colors! I sat looking out at the water reflecting the sky and the green grass and the bright yellow flowers on the forsythia bushes; and I thought of the black sky, of the countless shades of blues and purples of their world. I wasn’t lonely, only a little homesick.

  The Silva lay there, panting and filthy, blood clotted in the fur around its neck. The puppy slept curled between its front legs.

  Abruptly my head started pounding, like I’d been on a monumental bender. I tried to think, then reached out and stroked the Silva’s fur. Nothing. Cool, but no shock. I did not lose myself. Last night in a desperate gambit, the Silva had chosen me hoping it would find kindness in a stranger. What it needed, what they needed, was an ally.

  I stood and stepped away from the bushes, then grabbed the back of the bench, weathering a wave of dizziness. I sat on the smooth wood and brushed crumbs of dirt off my skirt.

  “You both need a bath,” I said, “and some tags.” I would have to bribe someone to get them licenses and vaccination records. “And I need some aspirin.”

  I looked back at the tangle of branches behind me, but the Silvas were gone. Then I heard footfalls and turned to see Hal walking down the path.

  He stopped in front of the bench, his expression sliding from smug satisfaction to alarm. I wiped at my face, hoping it wasn’t too grimy. I was sure my hair was a disaster.

  “Baby, what happened to you?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  He reached out to touch me, but I shrunk back reflexively and he withdrew his hand. He sat down on the other side of the bench. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said and couldn’t keep from smiling. I didn’t dare look around, to see where the dogs had hid themselves.

  “Big night out?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be here.”

  Now who was lying? “I was just leaving,” I said.

  “I know you’d asked me to stay away,” he went on without hearing me.

  “I
t’s okay,” I said. “You can have this place after all. Come here all you want.”

  I stood, slung my purse over my shoulder, relieved that the world felt solid under my feet. “Good bye, Hal.”

  He stood too, his hands hanging uselessly at his sides as I turned away and walked up the path.

  “Good bye,” he said, in that little lost-boy voice I’d found so endearing the day before yesterday.

  As soon as I was out of sight, I took my shoes off and ran around to the opposite side of the bushes. The two Silvas melted through the chaos of branches without a sound, and the three of us cut across the park, avoiding the trails, until we reached the border closest to my apartment.

  I knelt, took off my belt and looped it around the Silva dog’s neck, approximating a collar and leash. I looked out across the avenue. It was early, and there wasn’t much foot traffic.

  “We’ve got several blocks to cross,” I said. “You both just walk next to me like proper dogs and we should fool most people.”

  I dropped my shoes on the sidewalk and stepped into them. We’d crossed to another world and back; I was confident we could make it a few city blocks to my apartment. I’d get myself and the dogs cleaned up, so that we could all catch some sleep before they returned tonight. How many more could they get out before the tree was crushed and their world crumbled? When they arrived I’d be waiting with an armful of bright collars and shiny tags.

  I would have to quit my job, I thought, and another grin broke across my face. I would sell the apartment and get a house upstate, one with a big backyard that backed up to the woods.

  A place with lots of room for dogs.

  Inundated

  Jonathan Laidlow

  The survivor of a childhood lived near England's notoriously leaky Sellafield nuclear power plant, Jonathan Laidlow now has one good leg, one good eye, one good ear and a secret love of suits (just not the radiation-proof kind, unfortunately). A Web and E-learning Consultant for a West Midlands university, he works to travel and to write, and when he isn't writing he's evil and insufferable and makes everyone miserable. His colleagues' continuing sacrifice is clearly the world's gain.

  In the following story, the starkest of ecotones takes centre stage: where the land meets the water, magnificently different ways of life are separated by a barrier that for both sides likely means death to cross. But some creatures do cross it...

  Yuri woke up to the sound of waves breaking at the end of the street, and knew that the undines had breached the final defences. Even his house, one of the furthest from the harbour, would be theirs once again, like the rest of the city.

  He had slept in the upper bedroom and now looked out into the morning, surveying the city. The evacuation had begun a week earlier and been surprisingly orderly at first. Each street had moved together in strict order, beginning with those closest to the flooded harbour. The carts and horses were used for one migration, then returned a few hours later for the next street on the plan.

  Yuri’s house was at the top of the low hills and so they would be among the last to leave. Black-haired Vitaly, his eldest, wanted to get going, and thought he could head for the parkland at the top of the hill to find alternative transport. He wanted to get to the tent city and make sure he had a place for Piotr and Nina before he set off for Odinograd. None of them expected the refugee camp to be salubrious and, with the rumours of a mobilisation for a counter-attack any day now, Yuri had instructed him to find somewhere safe from the inundation and send for his siblings as soon as he could.

  “Look, Da!” Piotr, his middle child, was dragging a dinghy up the street as Yuri came outside. “Look what Barinov sold me!”

  Yuri stroked his ragged beard, peppered with flecks of white, putting on a show of disapproving evaluation. A fifty-year-old man with a full head of unruly blond hair, prominent lines around his eyes and sunburnt skin, penned in by memories and the rising unnatural tide. At last he nodded approvingly at the extra boat, then grinned. “Can we get it to the roof? It might be useful there.”

  Piotr rolled his eyes at Yuri and said, “You’re really not coming? The water’s already reached the next street. It’s rising much faster than they said.”

  “That’s why I might need a boat on the roof!” Yuri tried not to look worried, glancing down the hill. Sure enough, he could see water pooling at the crossroads, and wondered where those carts had got to, whether they had evacuated the streets below them. “Where’s your sister? She should be up by now.”

  Piotr looked around for her, and Yuri ran his hands through his hair. Did it show? Could they tell how scared he was? Were they putting on a front for the old man?

  “She’s in the house,” said Vitaly, “packing up Ma’s jewellery and preparing a bag for her.”

  “No,” said Piotr, “she’s not. I saw her down the hill, talking to that old body, Marissa.”

  Damn that girl! Twelve-years old and uncontrollable! “Vitaly, go fetch her.”

  As the lanky boy—no, he was a man, Yuri reminded himself—trotted down the hill, Yuri sat on the wall outside their little house and rubbed his temples. It was definitely getting hotter. Already the day sweltered, and even though he had been trying to pack only essentials for the children they seemed to have too many boxes.

  Born to a water family like theirs, it was only natural that Nina had been at least half fish or half porpoise, as her brothers had so often teased her. Since the inundation began, and since Ana had left, Nina had been combing the slowly drowning neighbourhoods for sightings. She kept careful notes of the areas and suburbs she had searched, and though he forbade her from doing so there was too much to be done for him to watch her every hour. She would always slip away. Like her mother.

  He thought back to the dry days when he had first met Ana. That stupid fight over the fish he’d just caught, which she had claimed as her own. His idiotically naïve acceptance of her story that her boat was just over the horizon…

  Piotr was looking through the binoculars down at the submerged harbour and the angry foam that covered the lower streets. “There’s something down in the water, Da. I think those boats are under attack.”

  Yuri took the instrument to see for himself. At first he didn’t quite get the angle right and focussed on the great vortex of the King Under the Sea, now lying just offshore. For years, the great whirlpool had lain offshore and all mariners had known to avoid it, except on festival days and when the sacrifices were required. It was said that the King lived at the bottom of the spout, and though no human had ever claimed to have seen him, all who lived by the shore felt his presence. Now the waves and the current were violent, keeping the folk from their boats, driving the water inland, and, each day, a steady stream of his creatures entered the city to hunt.

  Yuri moved his aim across the cranes and the tops of the harbour buildings, now just poking through the angry water—then found it. The lens on the left was cracked, but he could make out a row boat… just in time to see it overwhelmed by black amphibian shapes, flipping and splashing out of the water.

  Yuri shuddered. He heard shouting and lowered the binoculars as Vitaly and Nina, his beloved tomboy, came running round the corner and up the hill, a thin tide of dirty water fast behind them. As the torrent spread out to swamp new buildings they outpaced it, but the King had laid his marker firmly at the end of Yuri’s street. It was time.

  He grabbed his daughter in an embrace, just for a second. Over her shoulder he barked at the boys, “Load the boat, the water will reach us soon enough. Get only the essentials, move the rest of it back upstairs.” Piotr ran back into the house and Vitaly started lifting bags into the fortuitous dinghy.

  He released Nina but held her shoulders firmly, looked at her eye to eye. “Where have you been?” he said, sounding angrier than he felt inside. Her eyes were red from tears, and her tunic and trousers were damp and dirty. “What on earth do you think you’re doing? The King is taking this city and we need to leave!”

  “I was
looking for Ma,” she wailed. “I can’t believe you’re going to leave without her! What is wrong with you?”

  For a moment, Yuri nearly wept as well, but he never showed any weakness before the children, even his only daughter. He had promised, and Nina was too young to understand. But he had also promised to get them over the hill before the King Under the Sea began his onslaught, and it was nearly too late, so he blinked back the tears and shouted at the brothers to get the dinghy ready if they didn’t want a hiding, big as they were.

  By the time the water was deep enough to float their larger boat, the deluge was growing more vicious. Torrents burst between the houses as a fresh wave rolled in. Their neighbours and the few other citizens remaining ran shouting down these last dry streets, and Yuri considered abandoning their possessions and heading for the hills on foot.

  They loaded the new-found dinghy with enough supplies for the three children, then carried it to the edge of the rising water and lowered it in, tethered to the back of their boat. They paddled away from the stream of panicked refugees and went into the drowning city instead, making their way through eerily deserted suburbs.

  As the city’s edge gave way to sodden countryside, the land began to rise. Once they reached the meadow, Yuri left the children with a hug and a gruff farewell. Then he headed back to the family home, as he had always planned.

  To wait for his wife.

  The water levels settled after the initial surge. The ground floor was not immediately submerged so he completed moving their possessions on that first day, all the while keeping track of the progress of the King and his creatures through the binoculars. Just in case.