Xenocultivars, page 22
Sky was thinking of this, of winter fish and bitter greens, of food and of love. Of baked fish, skin crisp, oil on her mouth, and slightly burned fingers. Sky was thinking of how Fennel might kiss the burns, might kiss the grease off her mouth. This was why she almost walked right past it: a half-sunken building with a tree reaching up through the roof to the chill blue sky.
Fennel could read the old language because they’d grown up behind the wall, but they hadn’t been wanted there and they didn’t talk about it. Sky couldn’t read, but she knew pictures. There were faded pictures here, done on the plastic that humans used to have. Once bright, now faded to shades of misty blues and greens. They were clear, though: pictures of plants, vegetables. Maybe there was food inside.
She pushed through the weeds, the pooled water, the leaf mulch on the floor, and laid the snowdrops on the counter. Tree roots sank through the cracks in the floor, and birds called out in alarm from the tree above her. Light played through its branches, casting shadows over the decaying shop.
What she found in there was better than food.
It was seeds. Seed packets. Fruits and vegetables and everything else.
She filled her pack with every undamaged packet she could find. Fennel would be able to read them, and tell her how to use them. They could grow a garden.
Sky almost forgot the snowdrops. She went back for them, and left with the stalks held tightly in her fist.
* * *
It had been a surprise to Fennel that there were people out here. Behind the wall they told you there was nothing in the ruins, nothing in the land, that inside the walls was all there was. Fennel said to Sky that they would threaten to throw you out if you did wrong, if you were bad, if you didn’t fit. They said you would die, alone, with no one around you. Fennel didn’t know if they knew people like Sky were out here. Fennel didn’t think it mattered to them.
Sky had grown up out here — her mother had been smart and quick and good at teaching. You could live in the ruins very well, if you had to. There was other land, far away, with no ruins or flooding and all the plants you could need. It was a story her mother had told her. But the city stopped people from getting to it. It was built all the way across the little spit of land. From edge to edge, it ate it all up. On the other side of Sky’s home, an immense lake flooded what had once been a great and beautiful city. The people who lived there had been able to eat whatever and whenever they wanted, and sit in warm homes and just do nothing. Between the dead city and the living, this scrap of ruin, of land and shore, this was what they had. It was home to quite a lot of people, though they liked to live apart from each other to make their own survival in what was left to them. Sky sometimes thought that being too close to each other scared people out here, that they were too used to taking care of themselves. There were bad people, sometimes, but things had a way of happening to them.
One day, after Sky was grown, her mother had taken a boat and gone to see what was on the other side of the flood. Either she’d died or found wonders because she hadn’t come back yet. Shortly after, the people behind the wall opened the big metal gate and shoved Fennel out into the ruins, and they found each other. Three winters ago now.
She hadn’t been lonely before. Alone, often, but never lonely. She could go to the tower where Noelle and Moss lived with their two children, or she could go to the hut on the shore where Danae carved things from driftwood, or she could go to a lot of other places where people would be nice to her. She knew ten people to be friends with, not including Fennel, and she could recognise more who sometimes came to her with things to trade or help to offer. But there was a difference between that and someone who loved you entire, who wiped the dirt off your face one day and then kissed you for the first time shakily, like it might kill them, and who wept when you went to bed together. It was different.
Fennel didn’t like to be alone. It must be hard to go from having so many people around to having so few. Even if the people behind the wall hadn’t loved Fennel, hadn’t understood them, hadn’t wanted them — there had been a lot of people. Maybe a few thousand, Fennel said. But these things had come out in trickles over the years, mainly in the dark, because it hurt Fennel to talk about it.
Sky didn’t know if anyone else out here was from inside the wall. Maybe her mother had lived there once. She had never asked what her mother had been before Sky existed, first too young and then too stuck in not asking. She thought that being inside there hurt people so badly it stopped their tongues. Sky wasn’t one to force anyone to talk when they didn’t want to.
Fennel wasn’t back with the fish yet, so Sky put the slightly-wilted snowdrops into an old mug with a drawing of an angry cat on it and some water in it, set it down on the floor away from the fire so that the heat wouldn’t ruin them. She built the fire up with her hands, her own hands, scarred and strong and capable. It was just starting to burn nicely when Fennel came in, stocky body silhouetted against the door frame.
“Look,” Sky said. “Seeds!” She scattered the packets across the floor, a gift.
“Oh, wow.” They smiled, crouched down to look.
“I was thinking we could build a garden.” She wanted it. Wanted Fennel to want it too. Sky imagined plants reaching up to the sun, Fennel freckled and tanned beside them. It was a good thought.
“That’s a lot of work.” Fennel picked up one of the seed packets and looked at the writing on the back. “We’ll need to get started as soon as possible. To prepare the soil.”
“We could get help.” Sky smiled at them. “We have friends.”
Fennel pulled at their hair, like they did when they were anxious.“What if they don’t come?”
This was the thing Fennel never understood about living out here. Just because people didn’t want to be on top of each other all the time didn’t mean they wouldn’t help. You could live apart and still be good to each other. You could live alone, like Danae, and still be a friend.
“They’ll come,” Sky said. They had come after Sky’s mother left. Noelle and Moss had let her sleep in their home for a week, adjusted their life around her, let her eat at their table and from their stores. It had been work for them. “And we could trade anything we don’t need for stuff we do. Fish for work. Metal for wood.” She shrugged.
“I think Danae knows how to pickle and preserve things.” Fennel was always like this, slow to accept goodness when it was offered. They took it eventually.
“Probably.” Danae was very smart.
“You got fennel seeds,” they said, smiling, and dropped a kiss on Sky’s head.
“Oh, can I grow more of you? I’d like at least three —”
“Menace.” Another kiss, on the mouth, a little more lingering.
“I need to prepare the fish before we do anything with one, two, or three of me.”
They went outside to prepare the fish. Sky followed to help. A smelly, difficult job, but anything with Fennel was easier, brighter. They weren’t perfect, but being with them added just a touch of wonder to everything. After gutting, cleaning, and preparing the fish, they washed their hands in the cold water till they ached. And when that was all done, they went to bed, where it turned out just one Fennel was more than enough.
The next day Fennel started hauling stones into rough rectangles to build the garden. They said they’d put soil in them, plant the seeds when it was time. Sky went to ask people about help.
First, she went to Danae, who lived well near the shore, and was very clever. She said to keep food waste and rot it down for soil. Bury fish skeletons under the roots, she said, because bones are good fertiliser.
“I might come by,” Danae said. She looked a little shy about it. When Danae had been friends with Sky’s mother, she had been confident and free with her thoughts. Sky wasn’t used to thinking of Danae as shy about anything.
“The garden is for everyone,” Sky said. It had just come to her. There would be more than enough for everyone if they all worked on it together. As much or as little as they needed. It would be nicer, she thought, if they had something to bring them together that way. Something to remind them all they weren’t alone, that they had each other.
“I’m not quite old enough to remember before the flood,” Danae said, “but my father was. He talked about tomatoes. I’d like to try those sometime.”
“I did get some tomato seeds. Fennel says they’re good.” Sky would happily share tomatoes, if the tomatoes grew.
There was a chance, Fennel had said, that not all of the seeds would grow. They’d been in the packets a long time, and some of them might have died already. Sky thought the purpose of seeds was to grow. Danae, less shy now, said she would bring a box around for them to start making the compost in.
Next, she went to see Noelle and Moss.
They lived in the bottom three floors of an old tower, the top carved off into the shape of a sharp blade. They were both strong, and their children were getting to the age when they no longer wanted to be called children.
“Me and Fennel are going to build a garden,” Sky said. “You’re welcome to help, and take from it when it’s ready.”
“A garden?” asked their older child, Feather.
“Yes,” Sky said. “My mother told me about gardens. You grow food or flowers. It makes things easier. It makes things lovelier.”
Moss stretched out his back. “A garden,” he said, wonder in his voice. “That would be something to see.”
Noelle smiled. “Well,” she said. “We’ll help. We can build walls, and paths, and dig soil. And it would do the children good to learn.”
“Tell everyone,” Sky said, somewhat reckless. “Tell everyone about the garden. It’s all of ours.”
That was all the people she had the energy for today. But she would tell others, tomorrow and the next day and every day she could, that they were making a garden together.
She reached home as the early spring light was dying, her thighs and hips tired from the long walk. Even so, she could see that Fennel had made a good start, with plant beds marked out by driftwood and rubble. Even more would need to be done. A garden didn’t happen just because you wanted one — you had to work at it.
Sky grinned. “We’re going to build a garden,” she said. She wondered, too, about growing some of the things she liked and foraged from the ruins. It was good to see Fennel so happy about it. Sky was happiest when they shared their joy.
“I should have thought of this ages ago,” Fennel said. “I used to know —” They stopped, took a deep breath, started again. “I used to date a girl who worked in the hydroponics department. She showed me how, though she wasn’t supposed to.”
That was something new. Fennel almost never talked about any of their life before when they could see Sky’s face. They turned away, or closed their eyes, or spoke the words into the dark.
Sky loved them, their broad shoulders and soft stomach, their awkward but strong hands, loved the way they loved her back, and loved the healing wound at the heart of them. So Sky wrapped her arms around their middle, and buried her nose into their chest, to smell them, to breathe them in, sweat and salt.
“We’re going to build a garden,” she said again, with emphasis on garden. “And there’s no one to say we can’t, or to tell us what to grow, or to shout at us for anything.”
Fennel stroked her hair. They hadn’t had a name, when they were thrown out. Presumably they’d been called something, behind the wall, but names were something that shaped you and held you, given in love or taken in full self-knowledge, so they’d never had a name until they chose Fennel. It had taken two weeks, and when they’d named themselves they’d told Sky that Fennel was a herb both delicious and practical, something that would grow in almost any soil.
* * *
It was going well, building the garden. Sky got to see Fennel pointing out the shapes where their seeds would grow. Noelle and Moss came, the children with them. Sky could almost see the excitement, a thin thread trailing out as they moved. They broke ground, shifted rubble, talked for a bit, until the work got too hard. There was something about it, about them being here.
Fennel was still worried about soil, though. Where they lived had all been buildings once. It had broken down into rubble, dust, and dirt, but the ground was hard and rocky. The soil they did have looked grey, and no matter how large the pile of rocks they pulled out got, the stones never stopped coming.
Sky worried that nothing would grow. Most of the plants that grew here on their own were tough, hardy things that could get nourishment from the tiniest scrap of dust. Danae and Fennel had talked about fertiliser and rich soil and compost, and how most seeds needed more than gritty earth and water.
According to Danae soil used to be sold in bags, good soil that would feed the most delicate of plants. So Sky and Fennel went back to the place the seeds came from and they found some bags, but not enough. They had to dig up the rest, from places not too wet and not too dry, and take it back in a rusting metal cart that Moss had bought from a trader. What if all this work was for nothing? It might take too long to start the seeds this year.
Sky didn’t get upset often. She had been upset when her mother left, and in those early days when Fennel had been just a walking ball of pain. But normally she was good at taking things as they were and making the best of what she had. This was a survival skill, she supposed.
But she was upset now. This mattered. She had made promises, brought people together, and she wanted to keep it. They might get upset if it took too long to start the garden. Fennel must have seen the private cry she had about it, but they let it be private. She hadn’t known about the soil, and she had started the compost but rot took time, like growing did. There wasn’t enough.
Every day Sky woke up early with the light and there were more people there, happy and working, and the fear eased. Her friends came, and as the days passed they brought more people. People she knew a little, and even people she had never seen before.
Eventually there was a bright chill day when at least twenty people were there. All of them had soil, in barrows, in sacks, straining under the weight of it. Sky put a hand to her mouth to stop the noise she wanted to make.
It was no longer Sky and Fennel’s garden. It was everyone’s.
They put the soil down together in the cold, their breath hanging in the air and laughter singing out into the bright sky. It was work, and work that a lot of them weren’t used to, but they did their best. After a few days of people coming with soil and laying it down in the beds that Fennel built, they were all nearly full and ready.
Looking at it, knowing how close it all was — how one load of soil or maybe two would do it — Sky was so full of joy that she had to show them how she felt. She hugged Noelle, tight and happy, and behind her she saw Fennel, smiling delightedly as Moss slapped them on the back. They had nearly done it, together, and it would be theirs together for years to come.
They were so close to done, and the last lot they had chosen to take from just outside of the wall. The people within those walls didn’t get to claim the soil. They had enough. There was a whole city in there, miles across. They had all the soil they needed.
The walls were huge stone and metal things, casting a shadow so deep nothing grew within three feet. Fennel kept looking up at the walls and frowning as they worked. For all it had been Fennel’s idea to come here, they seemed nervous now.
Then there was a creaking, a squeaking. Sky stopped and looked up at Fennel, who was still and stiff through their shoulders. Sky knew that noise. Fennel probably knew it better.
They both saw the gates open. They saw a small shape shoved out, sent sprawling to the ground. They saw the gates close.
In long strides, Fennel sprinted to the new outcast. Sky followed, leaving their soil in the cart.
The new outcast was only a child. Sky ached at the fury and grief on Fennel’s face.
“A kid,” they said. “They did this to a kid...”
Sky got down on her knees.
“They do this,” Fennel said. They sounded almost on the edge of tears. “If you don’t fit. I was never dangerous, I was just... I just didn’t fit!”
The child wasn’t crying. They looked up at Fennel with wide, scared eyes, then their gaze flickered to Sky.
“They said there’s no one out here.” Thin arms tight around bruised knees.
“They lied,” Fennel said. “That’s what they do. They lie to you, so that you keep doing what they want.”
“I’m someone, and I’m out here,” Sky offered. She made eye contact with Fennel and smiled.
She said to the new outcast, “There are plenty of people out here, we’re building a garden. You’re welcome to help.” And she held out her hand.
C. B. Blanchard is a bisexual, nonbinary writer and poet living in the UK. They focus on weird spec fic with queer themes. A good day includes finding strange things in the woods and thinking about ghosts. Keep up with them on Twitter @BridhC.
Content Notes
The Aloe’s Bargain: injury, references to fatphobia, references to transphobia
This Story is Called “The Transformation of Things”: metaphorical transphobia, ableism
Uncharting Territory: illness and recovery, life-threatening corporate negligence
The Thing About the Jack-o’-Lanterns: bullying, offscreen non-graphic death
Midnight Candy: transphobia
The Mandrake Loves the Olive: threat of violence
Seedlings: body horror
Dandelion Wishes: anxiety
The Princess and the P. Sativum: off-screen attempted assassination, mentions of transphobia
