Lyra at the End of the World

This is fiction.

“But this is what I really want to show you.”

Lyra watched as the old man produced a wooden box from beneath a mountain of rubbish that had made its home on the dusty shelves.

“This,” the man said, tapping his crooked finger on the top of the box gingerly with a small knock, “is the reason for all of this.” The man shrugged his shoulders and gestured with his wrinkled hands to the air.

Lyra said nothing, but tried to hide her wonder as she stared at the harsh knots in the box’s skin, at the braids that twisted around its lid, carved in relief and worn smooth by time. The box appeared to be constructed of authentic wood, but how could that be? Only the wealthiest can afford a luxury like wood, made, as it is, from the flesh and meat of plants that were all but entirely wiped out by the great fires nearly a century ago, and whose cultivation is now only possible in strictly controlled environments. This old man looked like many things, but wealthy was not one of them.

She raised her eyes from the box to meet the old man’s stare. His eyes, reflecting the lambent glow that seemed to emanate from the box, told Lyra that he was relishing her wonder. “What is it?” She played along. The old man laughed a soft, unnerving giggle, then placed the box atop the table in the center of the room.

As the old man delicately raised the lid, Lyra lifted her heels and lurched forward on the tips of her toes to peek inside. The interior of the box was lined with a silver-like metal that looked both modern, for its flawless shine, and ancient, for its elaborate carvings that resembled the etchings in children’s books Lyra had seen. In the center a small, knotted branch, no longer than Lyra’s index finger, floated as if by magic. A jade leaf hung from the branch’s thin point, shining like painted glass in the soft light that rushed in from the torches around the room and refracted off the box’s metallic walls.

Silence enveloped the room as the old man allowed Lyra to inspect the artifact. She traced its edges with her eyes and instinctively brought her hand toward the box. “Go ahead,” the old man said, offering permission where she needed none.

The branch was light in the hand and warm like flesh. It curled and flexed in response to Lyra’s touch.

“That’s right,” the old man answered to a question he wasn’t asked. “I want you to have this, Lyra. I want you to put it by your side when you sleep. I want you to dream about the time before the great fires.”

Lyra was pleased with her new companion. She tucked it into her waistband and hid it beneath her shirt as she rushed back to her tent in Block Q, dodging strangers in the Old Quarter and shadows cast by the street torches along the way. When she reached her tent, she drew a flame in the lantern, checked for peeking eyes, and unsheathed the branch from her waistband to continue inspecting it. She asked it questions. “Where did you come from? What do you eat, or, erm, drink?” Finally, when she was done interrogating the branch, Lyra set it next to her, her new friend in lonely Block Q, before she drifted to sleep.

That night, Lyra dreamed she was standing by a house, like the ones she had seen in books. Wind filled her arms and left again as green leaves danced in front of her. The sky was crisp and clear and blue. Never had she seen a sky so blue.

When Lyra woke the next morning, she saw that the branch was no longer by her pillow and was momentarily overwhelmed by terror. She ruffled her bedding, sorted through her books, and checked the pile of clothes that sat in the corner. It had simply disappeared.

It was all Lyra could do to settle her panicked breathing. She began to weep. “Damn that old man, damn Block Q, damn this whole empty world.” As she buried her face in her hands, she felt a sharp stab in her cheek. “Ouch.” Looking into her hands, eyes blurred by welling tears, Lyra saw small a small thorn emerging from her right hand. A soft droplet of blood hung from its tip. In disbelief and confusion, she wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her left hand and looked again.

The thorn was unmistakably of the same wood as the branch. Lyra fingered it delicately, surprised to find that it didn’t hurt and that there was no apparent wound where it met her palm. She moved her fingers one by one, watching the thorn respond to the articulations and feeling the tendons of her middle and ring fingers glide smoothly against it underneath her soft skin. “Oh, there you are,” she said to the thorn and pursed her lips into a smile.

Lyra spent the rest of the day as she would any other day in Block Q, talking to old denizens of the block, eating what food could be had, pulling up whatever treasures she could find from the bed of the river that traced Block Q’s northern perimeter. But at quiet moments, she would remember the thorn in her palm. She would inspect it closely and ask after its condition. “Are you not thirsty?” “Does it hurt you when I move my hand like this, or this, or this?”

That night, she lay stomach-down on the floor of her tent, legs splayed and hand inches from her face, and watched the new appendage. She willed it to grow and twist its way upward. The night air was stifling, but Lyra felt cool and calm as sleep wrenched her focus away from this world and carried it into another.

In sleep, Lyra found herself again by the house she had dreamt of the night prior. Again the green leaves shifted and shook in the wind. Again the sky was blue. A boy came to the window of the small house and looked out at Lyra for a few seconds, then returned to the dark interior. The sun set behind her then rose again, bright and hot in the east.

Lyra woke to sirens, still prone on her stomach with her hand in front of her face. “Citizens of Block Q, a dust cloud is approaching,” a soft, prerecorded voice announced on the loudspeakers. “Please find shelter and take appropriate precautions.”

With a practiced turn and flip, Lyra found her way to her knees and snatched the gas mask suspended from the top of her tent by a small piece of twine. She brought the mask to her face and began to fix it into place with the calm movements of a person who has done this enough times before, but panic slackened her jaw and shortened her breath as she remembered the thorn.

She tossed around her tent searching for something to protect the thorn from the noxious particulate blowing on the wind from the power incinerators in the north. She threw over stacks of books, wrapped her hand in various pieces of clothing that each proved futile in turn. Darkness began descending on the tent, slowly at first then turning ravenous and swallowing all the light. When she could hold her breath no longer, Lyra resigned to the dust cloud, fixed her mask on, flopped to her belly, and thrust her thorned hand, palm open, under her pillow.

Dust clouds tend not to hold on Block Q for more than an hour at a time, and the announcement from the loudspeaker proved this one to have been more short-lived than usual. “Citizens of Block Q, air quality has returned to non-hazardous levels. Thank you for your cooperation. Have a nice day.”

Lyra lifted her face, shook the dust from her hair, and removed her mask. No longer encumbered by the gas mask’s filter, she filled her lungs with a deep inhale, then shook with hard coughs rejecting the lingering pollutants and heavy metals.

Lyra lazily withdrew her hand from underneath the pillow, and her eyes widened as she saw the thorn had grown several inches while she was taking refuge from the storm. In fact, it no longer looked like a thorn at all, but had instead evolved into something like a rigid seedling. It had grown from no more than an inch or so to nearly three inches, branched in two near the top. Its skin was dark brown like wet soil.

With articulations of her fingers, twisting of the wrist left, right, left again, Lyra repeated the impromptu battery of tests she had gone through the day prior. She searched for a wound and found none. Then she began to feel a distinct pinch behind her left ear. “Ouch,” she said, and startled herself. She probed the site of the pinch and found another small thorn, similar to the one that had sprouted from her palm but shaped like a shallow bowl, curling upward. Lyra felt it somehow natural, and was surprised by how comforting it was to find another change in her body. Is this what family feels like, she wondered, then turned her attention to the world outside her tent.

Block Q was quiet that day. Older residents stayed in their tents and wooden shacks, deterred from emerging by the lingering particulate. Lyra found ways to entertain herself and even managed to scavenge some provisions to appease the grumbling in her belly. On the northern perimeter, Lyra saw a tiff between two dogs over a dead bird escalate into more violent nipping and gnashing. She watched the creek near the Old Quarters flood with rainwater carried from somewhere far away. Here and there, when her mind wasn’t elsewise distracted, she would finger at the smooth, billowed thorn behind her ear or make small talk with the seedling emerging from her hand.

Lyra returned to her tent as the liminal red sky was fading to black. Not long after that, she was asleep and once again standing by that same house.

Her dreams took on a new character that night. Time seemed to move more quickly, and not so much in a straight line as in flashes. At her feet, a young couple played with a toddler, and Lyra knew that later in life the toddler would be the boy she saw in the window. Daylight evaporated into dark and the two became indiscernible. The white sides of the house withered and cracked, then sparkled with fresh paint. Clouds blossomed and collapsed, as rain, as snow, as hail.

Droplets of water collected on the roof of Lyra’s tent and dripped onto her face. She opened her eyes but remained still, breathing in and out in a dull and heavy rhythm. She felt blood filling and evacuating her fingertips, throbbing and releasing in time with her pulse. Beneath her thin blanket, Lyra felt how the seedling had begun to weigh on her arm. She sat upright, legs crossed, and observed buds forming at the tips of the two teeth that branched at the top. Beads of sweat collected at the pads of her fingers. She raised her left hand to compare, and her eyes widened upon seeing new seedlings emerging from underneath her fingernails.

If the young girl was frightened by her body’s metamorphosis or its seeming acceleration, then that fear must surely have been eclipsed by her fascination with the life emerging from her skin as a separate and precious entity. She had observed how other Block Q denizens would create fashionable approximations of plant life with scrap metal and materials that littered the streets and waters. To see this seemingly authentic artifact and to have it so personally embedded in her pleased Lyra.

Nevertheless, she felt a distinct fragility in the seedlings and became occasionally overwhelmed with worry about their wellbeing.

Lyra visited the old man again that day to learn more about how the branch had changed her. “Oh, Lyra, I’m so sorry,” he said. “We’re sorry.” Lyra studied his face quizzically, unsure about his seemingly earnest apology.

“But it’s quite magical, don’t you think? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Lyra responded.

“It is magical. It’s most magical. And we used to have miles and miles of uninterrupted magic. But we destroyed it, Lyra, and we’re so sorry for this.”

For Lyra, the time before the Great Fires was something like a fairy tale. On quiet nights, she had heard the wall-eyed bard in Block Q sing about it. Great machines were built, and towers pierced the sky. But it came at a cost, and the debts civilization accumulated were collected by drought and flood and storm. And then, the Great Fires came.

Lyra had only ever known a life in Block Q, so the old man’s words were too abstract for her comprehension. She imagined a field full of trees, identical to the seedling in her palm but standing at the height of three or four men. She imagined pigeons making homes in the branches, as the bard’s tales say they once had. She wondered about the process by which the trees were slaughtered and processed to make treasures like the old man’s wooden box, which had returned to the mountain of rubbish from which it was extracted when Lyra last visited.

“We destroyed it, Lyra,” the old man continued. “But we can have it back. We can have it all back. And you, Lyra, will give it to us.”

Lyra stared confused, waiting for the old man to explain further.

“But nevermind all this, all you need to do is take care of this magnificent creature. No harm can come to it. It will be strong before long, and so will you.”

As she reflected on those words later that night, she searched within herself to find strength, or something like it. What would it mean to be strong? Could she live without fear of the dust clouds, which would become longer and more frequent as winter approached and furnaces switched on for the comfort of the residents above the blocks? Could she protect others in Block Q from the clouds? Breathe into their lungs such that the masks and panic would be no longer necessary? Lift them above the clouds to where the air is cleaner?

Lyra’s thoughts raced around the interior of her mind even as sleep crept in from the corners of her eyes. When her consciousness finally submitted to dream, Lyra felt as though she had become one of the puissant protagonists in the bard’s stories. She watched the young couple play with the boy at her feet, even as he watched them, years older, from the window. The white house was bright and new, but carried a withered and rusted poltergeist that faded in and out of her vision. All these moments coexisted as small flashes.

Lyra felt her veins coursing, not as though by the force of a beating heart but in a constant, life-giving stream. She exhaled warm, wet breath from her every pore. Voices told her about the weather so many miles away. It was hot here, and cold there.

Then it was only hot. The voices sang in near unison.

Hot.

She felt her eyes struggling to adjust as all the coexisting moments were consumed by brightness. It was beautiful, like gold and amber catching the light of a summer sun. She searched for the strength the old man had promised, but found it bent and twisted into something else. The life-giving stream of blood that fed her flesh began to boil and evaporated through her flesh in tortured whistles.

She awoke with a start into the early morning hours. The soft glow of dawn filtered through the tent’s thin, green fabric walls. Her limbs were heavy and her body had grown stiff in the night.

Lyra had been an orphan for as long as she could remember, but she had ways to disguise her loneliness. For one, she had so many friends in Block Q. The women always treated her with such kindness, and the men told her that she would always be safe, that they would protect her. They were not parents, but they felt somehow like a family.

Lyra would also make friends with whatever life mingled in the blocks. She used dyes she had been gifted by the elders to color the backs of rats that nested in the quarry so that she could tell them apart. She gave them names and observed their goings on, admonished the meaner or greedier critters for such transgressions as stealing food from the weaker ones. When the rare insect would find its way into her tent, she would talk to it about stories she had heard or things she had seen in dreams.

In short, Lyra had mechanisms to deal with being so alone.

But somehow, in the earlier dawn light, she felt those mechanisms shut down and, for the first time, she was completely alone. She saw that her soft flesh had been made hard, that the seedling in her palm had grown over night to the width of her forearm. Her fingers wrapped around it as though they were making some comic attempt to grasp it.

It will be strong, she whispered to no one, parroting the old man’s words. And so will you.

Lyra stepped out from her tent into the dense morning air. Her feet moved awkwardly like a toddler’s first steps. She shook sleep from her eyes and struggled to swallow. All the while, she felt no discomfort aside from thirst.

Guided by intention, or something like it, she made her way through Block Q’s corridors to the northern perimeter. The soil and sediment on the river’s edge pulled at her toes, magnets tugging on iron. She dug her feet into it, following the command of some disembodied chorus of voices. It was a familiar sound, and after a moment’s thought she recognized it as the garrulous orchestra from her dreams.

Her feet went deeper into the soil, and she felt rigid muscles contracting and relaxing. She saw the old man in the distance, weaving through Block Q, first as a speck then growing larger as he approached. She waved to him, moving her limbs by some kind of peristalsis.

Her loneliness dissipated as the chorus of voices grew.

“Welcome home.”

They continued to sing to each other, their voices carried on the wind and through the nourishing soil. She felt thousands of miles shrink to inches, and joined in with songs about the old man, about Block Q. She sang that they were the first children she had met, and she was so happy to know them.

When the old man had finally reached her, Lyra found that he had become quite small and knew it was because she, herself, had grown. Her torso had become thick and strong. Her legs extended out in every which way under the surface of moist soil. Her arms and hair stretched high and wide, branches and twigs that filled with wind and emptied with long, rejuvenating exhalations of water.

The old man touched her trunk, and she saw him say something, but no words reached her ears. He sat at her feet, unmoving as morning became afternoon and afternoon faded into night. The progression of days became faster, Lyra always singing and wondering if he could hear her.

Sometime later — although Lyra could not be sure just how long it had been — the old man’s subtle movements, a gentle wave against her bark pulsating with each inhale and exhale, became still. Then, he was gone.

Lyra dropped seeds into the riverbed, and her children grew and added their voices to the ever louder symphony. Rust and decay gave way to verdant life. The dust clouds were fewer and farther between, until they were no longer.

Humankind soon forgot about the world they had wrought, the cautionary tales drowned by stories of progress and rebirth.

Still, Lyra and her family preserved the stories in their songs, hoping that this time would be different. This time, Lyra prayed, they will hear us.