Hell from a Well (Hummingbird series), page 9
"We ain't. Fahar and Sythe just signed up. As for me, we never met. But you knew Hebab from—"
"Yeah, how's he do—"
"He died about a week after he got back into town. Coughed up blood and everything. He told us everything, said to look you up. We, we didn't believe about the Twelfth when the messenger came that first time." Lar looked at his feet in shame, as did the other two. "We didn't go. Hebab, he was my younger brother."
Hihel shook his hand, then pulled him in close for a hug and a pat on the back. "You'll make him proud."
"Your village is the only place we can hole up, thought we'd stay and leave with all of you. We didn't know the way, barely knew how to get here. Never left my village my entire life."
Hihel patted him once more. "For God's army, everywhere is home. And every home has room for more."
The father motioned to the couch and chairs in the living room. "Come, sit. I'll tell my wife to add three more. It isn't much, just buns and—"
"It'll be plenty, Sir," Lar said, then all three said "Thank you," and found seats closest to the fire. "You still have oil here?" Lar watched as the father adjusted the flame.
"Yeah, if you can call it that. It's the thick, unrefined stuff—"
"Better than the nothing we got!" Fahar jumped up and walked to the kitchen. "Got lamps too. You're truly blessed with God's favor." He walked closer to get a better look. "You should see the sad stock we got. The little bits of oil that could be scrounged where we live gets burned on dinner plates with shoestrings and strips of cloth." He took a big sniff from it, "Don't even stink like ours." He returned to the living room, "Nice. Gonna be a shame to leave all this—"
Hihel put his arm around the younger boy, "No, it'll be your greatest honor. You'll see, just to walk the same path he walked. You'll see, brothers, you'll see. And all of this, everything, it'll all make such sense."
The father cracked open the bedroom door, "Myla, fix our honored guests some of your best," he pronounced loudly before stepping in, then closed the door behind him. "And make sure our girls are dressed appropriately, or stay out of sight," he said so only she could hear.
She dressed in her full, cumbersome attire before leaving his room.
"Buns will need another three hours to rise," she said, ducking quickly into the girls' room to get them in line. Hihel was one thing, these boys were another. "Sylia, Ashina, you two get dressed and help me in the kitchen." Myla stopped Sylia from reaching the door, "Get dressed first." She swung her back to face the bed, then sniffed the air.
Tour lifted the plate that blocked the light from the lamps.
"What's cooking on that one?" Myla asked.
"I don't know, I didn't put no—" Tour said.
"Just look," Myla said.
"Two 'tatoes, wedge of onion maybe. I didn't put—"
"Well, bring it here—"
Tour hollered when he touched the hot tray.
"Not with your bare—" Myla walked over, it was a small room and simply easier this way, "You know better."
He waved his hands by his sides and blew on his fingers.
A holey sock was sitting beside it just for that purpose. She pulled out the tray and tested their hardness with the knuckle of her finger. Soft enough. She checked the state of dress of her girls, then grabbed Sylia again. "Is this it?"
Sylia nodded yes.
That was about as she figured. "Reaha, I've got an old sheet you can wear for a few days, but I don't want to see you leave this room. Ashina, keep track of this one," Myla said before releasing Sylia and leaving, door closed behind her. "This ought to hold you boys 'til then."
"Yes Ma'am." They said.
"Careful, it's still hot."
"Yes Ma'am." Lar continued with Hihel, "We're sorry for coming so early, but we weren't sure when exactly you were leaving. Didn't want to miss you. My brother was the only one who returned home, so, we couldn't find our—"
"It's all right, Brother— Brothers, we'll leave a few days early."
"We didn't stop at all last night, we knew your village was here somewhere, and it was too cold to—"
"Completely understandable." Hihel stood, "There's two beds in my room waiting for you. When you've warmed yourselves enough by the fire, get yourself a proper rest. Breakfast won't be ready for a few hours."
Lar shook his head, "No, no, here by the fire will be just—"
"Please, you're guests." Hihel placed his hand on Lar's shoulder, "You'll find most homes open for the warriors of his army. My father's is no exception."
The father nodded in silent agreement. They had no such excess in food. Hihel and the other returning warriors had added nothing to the garden but had drained what little surpluses a village this small had. Three more mouths would be difficult to feed. It meant rationing of food again. Probably severe rationing. But soldiers, warriors of God's army, would not go unfed, no matter how long they stayed.
The father looked at the kitchen. His wife and Sylia where adding extra flour now, kneading it in to double the loaf.
The girls, with Reaha covering her boy's clothes in sheets, went to the well to fetch another cart of water before breakfast, so their guests could wash from their long journey. Made more difficult on empty stomachs.
While their guests slept, the girls washed the sacks of dirty clothes as well, making for two trips in the same day.
They were boys of Reaha's age, and it was difficult to keep her from trying to be more social. They were new and interesting and not at all hardened by battle like her brother. They glanced often whenever she would enter the room. Even covered, head to toe, Reaha had a shape that loose sheets couldn't hide forever.
They stayed six nights. The men ate loudly at the table while the girls waited patiently, out of sight, for whatever was left over from every meal. The stories were entertaining and new and made the waiting much easier to take. The stories were new, but very familiar.
Their village had lost water as well, but they had stuck strictly to the state's guidelines on farming. Thirty died each year between winter and spring. They burned stalks for heat, when they could get stalks and grass to grow. They burned furniture and tables and chairs and every stick of wood used in abandoned homes.
Most of their young men had stayed. By staying, they added to the mouths needing to be fed and inhibited the village's flexibility from state rules. They saw the messenger twice a year and were under greater pressure to plant the crops requested. They had large farms of mostly the cereals. It was what they knew best how to grow. It had never occurred to them to switch to another crop, like potatoes.
It had made everything far worse. They had limited water, and the crops they planted were the most thirsty of all. They didn't uproot deformed plants, they trusted the state and hoped for the best.
They were hurt badly by the drought, made worse by their prideful refusal to eat whatever could be caught on a farm.
But with so many dead and a good harvest last year, they were optimistic again.
They were as happy as Hihel to run off to war.
Myla wasjust as happy to see them go.
Chapter 11
Sylia rolled the dough, then formed it into a bowl.
Myla watched, just the two of them in the kitchen that morning. No, it wasn't a bowl, it looked more like the old pool she had seen when they lived in the city. It sloped to a pocket with a deep end.
Sylia scooped the flour and dumped it onto the dough. Then she added the water.
Myla hadn't taught the girl to make buns this way, but she didn't interrupt. She just watched.
Sylia looked up at her, then back down at the flour. She ran her finger through the deep end. The flour on top looked dry, but the water had pooled beneath it. Sylia looked up at her mother again, added more flour, then kneaded it as usual.
This had been the time when Sylia would write something in the dough, but she didn't this morning.
Spring days hadn't gotten unbearably hot, so most could be found doing their common chores in the garden during the day. No altered sleep schedules yet. But that would come in the weeks ahead.
Myla walked home with her girls and Tour. They were done for the day, but she still had to start dinner soon.
As the village came into sight, Sylia grabbed her mother's hand and tugged.
Myla looked down. "Reaha, get started on dinner for me, ok?"
"Sure, Momma."
They fell behind as Sylia led her around the back of a string of homes.
It was just the two of them.
"What is it, Child?"
Sylia pointed to the streets, the abandoned buildings, and the slight slope of the land. She picked up a broken chunk of asphalt and handed it to Myla, then picked up another and rubbed it on the dirt pothole between so much that was otherwise perfectly paved. She took the mother's hand and led her back to a depression where the runoff would naturally flow. She rubbed the spot with the chunk of asphalt, then tossed handfuls of dirt at it.
"I'm. . . What are you getting at, Child?"
She rubbed, then tossed again.
"I. . . "
Sylia squatted, then held her hands like a cup.
Myla looked around. It made sense, a little.
Sylia moved to the nearest dry puddle and rubbed the inside with the asphalt, then the slope around it before filling it with dirt.
"No, Child, I get it. I just don't see what the chunk of asphalt has to do with—"
Sylia held the chunk, then slapped the back of her hand.
"Oh." She looked around again. It was as big an area as the garden was, but a lot closer. Filling it with dirt would be a nightmare, but they would only have to do it once. The lowest points would have to be dammed up. There was even the rubble of an asphalt road nearby. "There isn't that much good dirt to fill something this big."
Sylia dug out the dried puddle, put gravel in, then sand, then topped with a dusting of dirt.
They had plenty of sand. She looked around again. "We'll see," she said.
Sylia ran to one of the three dips that would work as future reservoirs. She sat down and made her arms like a hoop in front of her, stood, then made her hands like a cup that she slowly pulled up like it was a shallow well.
"No, honey, I get it. It's a good idea. It's just too big for Reaha and I. This isn't lamps or spoons, this would be a village-wide project." She took the girl's hand, "We've got dinner ahead of us."
It got discussed. Repeatedly. Myla knew who to convince and how to champion a cause, could be very diplomatic, and was well liked by most. It took a week, the garden's demands wouldn't have allowed it to come any sooner.
The project took a month. A very difficult month. Championed mainly by the older bunch that longed to contribute but couldn't handle the trek to the garden, a retired civil engineer enthusiastically took it over as a project of his own. He organized and re-engineered it, perhaps overly so, using every salvageable brick and block from the abandoned buildings to make reinforced reservoirs and covered drainage ditches. The melted recycled asphalt was the key to it all, and the only convenient way to waterproof so many acres.
They over planted the main garden in anticipation of the successful completion of the asphalt project. This was the last, painful step. Transplanting from a garden miles away. Moving seeds was easy. Moving the equivalent in seedlings was a nightmare.
The results, however, were very promising.
The children arrived at the top of the hill a few minutes before dusk. The sled of dry fertilizer was heavy, but split four ways it wasn't hard. They were divided up into groups to begin their weeding chores before they would be allowed home.
Ashina and Sylia were assigned the larger section again. This time they didn't bother with the single-bottle deception of past years. They worked well together, something practical leaders quickly recognized and continued to reward.
As usual, the walk to the garden had oldest to youngest sitting on the ground for a few minutes before work would begin in earnest.
"Sylia," Ashina said, "you think it's too early for scorpions?"
Sylia nodded. She lifted a finger, then wiggled her hand.
"A month?"
Sylia shrugged.
"I was hoping for some tonight. I'm tired of mom's dry buns for lunch every day." She stared up at the night sky. "I called it lunch again, didn't I?"
Sylia smiled.
"Middle of the night is lunch. Dinner is first thing in the morning. They're trying to drive me nuts."
She smiled again, then stood up.
"I'm not ready yet. Another minute or two." Ashina pouted.
Sylia looked down the rows. The plants only came up to their shins, nothing big enough to hide behind. The elder in charge was staring at them. Nothing said, no gestures or even a scolding finger, but the stare was unblinking.
Sylia held out her hand and helped her sister up. It was better to get started now than risk a stare turning into a scold.
Ashina took a last drink of water. "At least these weird hours make Ramadan a cinch."
Sylia smiled, then started weeding.
They didn't make it to lunch, even though lunch was the middle of the night. Clouds had come up and were blocking some of the diffused night light. They made it home before the rain hit.
It wasn't much rain, lasting an hour at most, but that morning there was a large crowd around the asphalt garden. It had held. The shallow wells located above the many pits gave them an accurate gauge of how much water it had harvested from the runoff.
It did far better than any expected.
By the middle of summer, the asphalt garden, made mostly of sand, was doing nearly as well as the fertile spot over a mile away. The shallow wells gave convenient access points to fill buckets and water dry sections. Over watering wasn't an issue since any excess flowed back to the well anyway. The soil was inferior and required daily watering, but it was holding its own.
They already had harvested enough to guarantee safe passage through winter. If the trend held, they would have enough stored by fall to cover for a year of complete crop failure. They were looking at a real surplus, even without the return of the river they went to war over.
Double the gardens meant double the weeding and double the picking as well.
That meant more from the children, even with the very old pitching in at the closer, asphalt garden.
"The messenger is here! The messenger is here!" they screamed from the streets at the hottest part of the day, when almost everyone was sound asleep. The pounding on doors was nearly deafening.
They poured out of the houses in robes and nightclothes like a bunch of lazy slobs.
The messenger dropped a stack of papers by his feet that came up to his knees, then stacked two more that he pulled from his cart. "People! Good citizens! I realize the water has yet to be restored, but other events are turning in our favor." He climbed onto the concrete pedestal to better survey the crowd. "It has been a hard decade for most. But we must all pull together. Who is your town leader?"
A man stepped forward from the crowd.
"Good, yes, I must talk with you before I leave today." The messenger fumbled with a list he pulled from his pocket. "The Twelfth has requested that anybody with a background in genetics come with me back to the city." He read a little further, "Now, when I say genetics, I don't mean just a medical background. I'm talking someone who was up to speed with all that germ warfare stuff."
He looked around the crowd.
"Look, state records said some of them moved to these parts. We don't care how old. You will be given housing in the city."
That got a larger response. Some looked on the verge of raising hands.
"Look, let me put it this way. The state has a list of names that they haven't tracked down yet. The Twelfth wants them for a special project. You'll live a pampered life as compensation; if you meet expectations, you'll be richly rewarded." Hands got higher, but none went up yet. "Show up and be unqualified, and you'll be punished almost as severely as someone who's qualified that we have to track down from that disorganized list."
The messenger waited, but no hand went up.
"Yes, the main list was destroyed with our war against the infidels to protect those names. But, it was by no means the only list."
Two stepped forward, then a third.
The messenger stepped down and had a talk with them with as much privacy as could be found in a village as gossipy as this. He then walked off with the religious head of the village. They walked down the street, pointed around, walked some more, then returned.
The messenger climbed the pedestal again. "The sacrifices of your sons will not be forgotten. Death to the infidels! Long live the Twelfth!"
The crowd chanted along, fists pumped into the air.
The papers were plentiful this visit. Previously, they were lucky to get one paper out of every month. This year, they got a paper for each week of the last year. It was a reading bonanza.
Reports of the Twelfth led every cover, above and below the fold. Most sounded impossibly mythical, just like the stories Hihel told, but every bit as cruel. It seemed to fly in the face of what a merciful God would send. But they were to be obeyed, no matter how flawed and merciless they were.
Slaves worked farms in the city. Religious leaders had passed rulings validating the use of slaves as just compensation for the deprivation of water. Most were put to work on the outlying farms to replace the slaughtered beasts of burden.
The war had gone badly when her eldest enlisted, but had turned. Recent campaigns, those Hihel had been on, were overwhelmingly positive and glowing with the flowery speech only the most agile politician could master. It sounded good enough to be propaganda.
It didn't matter much. It still had little effect on the gardens that meant life and death to the village.
No cures to the problems with chickens or seeds. The latest paper had three sections on how to identify and sift out what seeds were most likely to be fine and those most suited for soups. Depending on the plant, it could be as easy as which floated and which sunk.
