Stitch, p.4
STITCH, page 4
“It looks like a grain of sand,” Molly said, “but smaller.”
“It's a seed.”
“What does it grow?”
Vora answered by smiling and dropping the seed on the floor where she'd been weeping over the little piles of sand. Molly noticed the stone there wasn't as smooth as she remembered it had been when she went to sleep. Now, it was rougher and crackled with fine fissures.
Then the floor of the shelter vibrated and hummed with something coming to life.
New cracks formed, not more than a hair's-breath wide, and little puffs of smoke shot out of them while the crackling pattern spread itself outwards across the floor.
“Vora?” Molly asked, “Is it safe?”
“It's okay, Molly.”
Molly rose, sat in the hammock, and pulled her feet up off the floor. Vora stood next to her.
The fine cracks spread themselves out into a circle almost three yards wide, and then shapes began to draw themselves under the surface. First they were just a pattern of bulging, fractured swells that appeared and spread outwards from where Vora had dropped the seed. Then they began to rise.
They broke through the surface as tiny, squarish, pointy-topped polygons and pushed themselves up. They were only half an inch high, but even at that tiny scale, Molly's eyes could make out the windows and doors on their sides.
“It grows houses, little houses!” she exclaimed.
“It'll grow full-size houses if I tell it to.”
“Big enough for people to live in?”
“I'm going to grow them everywhere,” Vora said.
As the perfect, toy houses pushed themselves upwards across the floor, an intricate network of smooth white lines rose to connect them all. Streets, Molly thought, as her eyes followed the snaking paths between the thick crops of houses growing everywhere.
Soon, Molly and Vora looked down over a toy city like a pair of giants. They watched new shapes push themselves up around the clusters of houses – larger ones of all different shapes and sizes, none of which Molly recognized.
“What are those big, strange houses for? What are those ones like bowls?” Molly asked.
“Those,” Vora said, “are amphitheaters. And those,” she said, pointing to round-topped towers, “those are places to store food. There are marketplaces just inside the gates.”
“Is it made of stone?”
“It's all made of cellular automata,” Vora said.
“What's that?” Molly asked.
“Little witchy creatures so small you could barely see just one of them. Very small, very smart creatures that do what they're told and can work together to make themselves into almost anything. Together they make up the whole city. It's like a body. It's a living thing.”
“Where's its head?”
“There,” Vora said, laughing and pointing to a smooth dome rising in the very center of her lilliputian city.
“It looks like the top of a skull,” Molly observed.
“And there's a brain inside, a mnemonic intelligence that tells all the automata what to do.”
“Is it smart?”
“Very smart. It knows when to grow the city bigger. And how to protect itself, too. Go on, reach down and hurt something.” Molly hesitated. “Go on, it's okay. Here, use this, Vora said, handing her an ornate, white, bone-bladed knife. “Poke at the walls.” It was the same knife the General had taught her to use – the same one she'd killed the saber-slash raiders with. “Go on, it's okay,” Vora said.
Molly got up from the hammock, took the knife, and stepped forward until she stood over the city's walls. She bent down and jabbed the knife point into the six-inch-high walls that towered over the buildings inside. The witch-bone blade penetrated with ease. She withdrew the tip and did it again.
A swarm of fine sand grains separated themselves from the tops of the toy city's walls and moved as if blown by a purposeful wind. They went to where Molly held the tip of the blade. The sand grains piled themselves up and formed into a figure – a little, stone man as tall as the walls.
The miniature golem guard stepped forward, reached up, and batted the end of the bone knife away from the wall with surprising strength. Then it stood with arms akimbo and looked up at Molly.
She laughed at the stern little giant. Molly poked his belly with the knife, and the tip went right through him. When she pulled it out, the wound closed itself, and he was unharmed. He tried to grab the tip of the blade, but Molly was too fast for him, and she sliced off one of his arms. It turned to sand where it fell before flowing up his legs and torso to reform where she'd cut it off. Molly giggled. It was fun to use the knife on something that didn't bleed or scream or cry for its mother.
“He'll be over a hundred-feet-tall at full scale,” Vora said. After Vora took the knife back and they stepped away, the six-inch-high man turned to fine sand and flowed up into the walls of the little city. Molly clapped and waved goodbye to him.
“What are those?” Molly asked, pointing at little white circles now appearing everywhere among the buildings.
“Wells. The automata can pull water up from down deep where it's fresh and clean.”
Queer, white trees sprouted amidst the buildings, and their branchless trunks were thick at the bottom, but slender near the top where they spread a broad-leafed canopy outwards in all directions.
“What kind of trees are those?”
“Those are made of the same thing as the buildings and the houses, but in the real city they'll be helio trees like the helio vines there,” she said, pointing to the wall where the tendrils grew in from outside and the wasps sucked sap. “They'll gather sun and make light and sugar-sap fruits you can eat. Their sap will feed the city, too.”
“The city eats?”
“It's all alive, Molly. And everything alive eats something.”
“And what's that, over there,” Molly asked, pointing to a strange, round, bulging structure growing quickly next to the domed skull of the shining city. It swelled outwards and looked as if it were about to burst. “What is it?”
“That's my favorite part,” Vora said in a dreamy voice. “That's the part that makes more seeds. And more cities.”
Molly immediately understood the implications of this, and she clapped her hands with glee. “It's beautiful, Vora.”
“Would you like to live there when I grow it full size, Molly?”
“Oh, yes. And with the walls and the magic stone men, nobody could come and take things and kill everyone. Does it have a name?”
“It's called Sugar Music. And if my work is successful, then everybody can live in a place like this.” Vora smiled. “There will be enough seeds to grow more cities like this everywhere – all over the wilds.”
Molly clapped her hands again, but suddenly her eye caught the chaos beginning at her feet.
The first houses that had pushed their way up through the floor were changing shape. Their walls moved. At first, their new forms looked like jumbles of the parts that made them. Chimneys pointed out sideways from walls, and doors appeared on roofs that slid down the sides of the little houses like they were melting. All the miniature structures quickly turned into a series of alien shapes that made no sense at all to Molly. Where moments ago there had been perfect little houses there was now a crop of freakishly animated mushrooms that changed their shape to something weirder every second.
It spread across Vora's little city like a disease until the whole thing was unrecognizable. The floor of the shelter was covered in hundreds of amorphous blobs that changed from one useless form to another. They mutated faster and faster until one by one they all collapsed into the little piles of sand Molly had woken to see Vora weeping over.
Molly looked up at Vora in astonishment. “What happened to Sugar Music?” she asked.
Vora didn't answer.
Chapter Six
Bloodhounds
As Vora watched Molly sleep in her hammock and imagined the girl sleeping in the shelter of her city, the Fin Singh construct appeared between them and spoke words that chilled her: “One of the Hale Guard's bloodhounds is close.”
The wreath showed Vora views from the twin-entangled eyes her wasps had planted outside. Far down the rubble-filled streets of the ruined city above, she saw a copper-blood hound, massive and muscled, moving in a lazy, half-canine lope. Its legs were reverse-jointed, and the front set was written to be half the length of the rear ones to keep its nose always near the ground. The human code stitched into it for intelligence made it an even more nightmarish creature.
Vora took a deep breath, drew a shot of water from the dowser weed's bladder, drank it, and asked, “Will it find us down here?”
“It's highly probable,” the Singh construct said, “given your recent excursion to retrieve the child.”
“That was weeks ago,” Vora protested.
“Bloodhounds have followed much colder trails in the past. You know its capabilities. You wrote the beast.”
As the Singh construct spoke, Vora saw the unnatural creature slow and stop in its path. Then, it crouched its rear end low, pushed off the ground with its stumpy front legs, and stood up. It balanced with its tail and forelegs and pushed its broad, over-sized snout as high into the air as it could. After a few seconds, it dropped on all fours again and walked in a circle, pushing out a thick, foot-long, slug-like tongue that it swirled through the dust before it trotted a serpentine path down the street in the direction of Vora's shelter.
“I think you recognize that behavior,” the Singh construct said. “It's found traces.”
“Dammit!” Vora exclaimed, pacing first one way and then the next in the small shelter as her face grew pale.
“The success of your plan to hide here was entirely dependent on your not exiting the shelter and leaving trace scent trails.” The construct added, “I told you not to leave the shelter.”
Then the General and his chameleon-skin jumpsuit appeared behind Fin Singh, and he told Vora he had a plan.
*****
Vora woke Molly and explained it was time to go.
There wasn't much to gather up – some protein gruel, some water. Molly was already wearing the little, gray dress and the boots Vora had made for her. Vora gave her the bone-bladed knife, sharpened by the wasps' gnawing jaws, and a little sheath to keep it.
Molly put the knife in her pocket. Once she'd stuffed everything else into a small sack made of the same witch-grown fibers as her dress and her boots, she heard the hum-buzzing of the Stitchlife's creatures taking flight.
She looked up to see Vora, eyes closed and her arms outstretched like a scarecrow. The wasps hovered around her and then they all sank their stingers in deep. Molly ran forward to smack them off of Vora, but the wasps took to the air again, leaving trickles of blood and stains where they'd stung. They zipped and careened off the shelter's walls and filled the air everywhere. Vora opened her eyes, smiled at Molly, and got down on one knee to meet her moist-eyed, terrified gaze.
“Vora?” Molly asked.
“I'm okay, Molly,” she said. “They just took some of my blood.”
“But why?”
“The Hales have found me. We're going to have to run now,” Vora said. “Do you understand?” Molly didn't, but she nodded. “We're going to run, and we're going to have to split up.”
“No!” Molly cried. “Don't leave me alone...”
“I have to, Molly. It'll be safer for you this way; you'll escape. If I escape, too, then we'll meet again later, I promise, but for now it has to be this way.” Molly squeezed her eyes shut and cried until Vora said, “I have a very important job for you.” Vora took the laurel-leafed bone wreath from where it perched on the top of her head and placed it like a crown on Molly. Molly reached up to touch it, and somehow it was stuck fast to her head. “I need you to keep the wreath safe for me, Molly. When we meet again, I'll take it back. Do you remember the little city that I showed you?” Molly nodded. “It's all in there. In the wreath. I'll grow Sugar Music City big someday, but for now, Sugar Music is all in my wreath, so keep it safe for me.”
“I don't want you to go,” Molly said.
“Do you want to see Sugar Music City?” Vora asked. Molly nodded. “Then sacrifices,” Vora said, “will have to be made.”
“Where?” Molly asked. “Where will we meet?”
“Go South out of the dead city until you reach the edge of the rolling-hilled 'Fills. You'll know when you do. If I don't meet you there by tomorrow's noon then keep heading South, away from here.” Then she pulled Molly to her. It hurt Vora that Molly didn't return her embrace at first, but a second later, she felt the little girl's arms squeezing her tightly. In a few agonizingly short moments, Vora said, “Okay, Molly. Let's go.”
*****
In the dim of dusk, Vora and Molly huddled in the rubble of a collapsed building two blocks from the shelter neither of them had left for weeks. The wasps hovered high overhead. The girl wept quietly, but all Vora could do for her now was hug her once more before she asked, “Molly, are you ready?” Molly nodded. “Good girl.” Vora pointed South and said, “Go, Molly. Protect the wreath. Protect Sugar Music. Go now.” Molly didn't move, and Vora had to shout, “Go!” and give her a little shove before she ran away into the half-dark like a blurry, streaking ghost.
Faster than the Hales, Vora thought.
After a few deep breaths to calm herself, Vora stepped out from where they'd been hiding and ran North. She knew the bloodhound she'd seen was close now. It would pick up her fresh scent and report the direction of her travel.
The wasps followed above Vora as she ran, and once she'd established a firm scent trail leading North that extended over several blocks, they began to spread out and execute the General's plan.
One by one, they peeled off from their orbits, and their stingers spurted minute droplets of the blood they'd drawn from Vora's veins. Beaten by the wasp's fast-moving wings, it misted and spread itself, covering the city in the Stitchlife's scent. The bloodhound's brothers would undoubtedly arrive soon, and when they did, they'd find a scent so strong and so compelling that she hoped they'd disregard the comparatively weak trail left by her actual travels.
By dawn, her wasps had misted her blood all over the North of the city, and Vora circled around to head South.
The General's plan was a good one, but it did nothing to fool the bloodhound Vora encountered as it entered the city from the South, bounding on its twisted legs to rendezvous with its brothers. When the bloodhound saw her, it stood up, tilted its head back, and let out its howling alarm. The awful sound echoed off the ruins, and its cry made Vora imagine it had a yen to take vengeance on its Stitchlife maker for the perverse form she'd given it.
No matter how strong her scent was to the North, this one had seen her. Its pack brothers would hear its cry, and since the bloodhound was probably being monitored by the Hale Guard through a witch-bone helm, what it had seen, Vargas Hale's Guard had seen, too.
Vora didn't have to wonder what she looked like through its eyes. She'd worn a helm twinned to the bloodhounds during a chase once. She'd seen men through its eyes and remembered the desperation on their faces as they looked over their shoulders at the bounding, relentless, inescapable nightmares behind them.
The wasps were too far away now to help her, and without the wreath she had no way to control them, so just like the men she'd seen run down by her unnatural hounds, Vora ran too. Escape was impossible, but she saw the best escape she could hope for in the twisted, rust-metal frame of an ancient water tower that boiled and burst centuries ago.
She ran to it and climbed to the top where its vessel had ruptured and blossomed into a sagging steel flower. When she reached what remained of the catwalk underneath its razor-edged petals, she looked down at the ground and the howling hound below. It knelt on its reverse-jointed legs and stared up at her, drooling.
High enough, Vora thought. High enough that her apprentice, Corina wouldn't be able to pull memories from her broken head for Vargas Hale. With luck, they'd never find Molly or Sugar Music. The girl was faster than any of the Hales.
Vora closed her eyes and dove out into the empty air. As the wind roared past her ears, she thought about how she'd failed. She failed Sugar Music and she failed mankind, but at least she'd managed to save one little girl. In her last moments, that thought helped Vora pretend she had no regrets about the path that led her here to fall and fall and fall.
Chapter Seven
Ghosts of the Living and the Dead
“Vora Mbuntu is dead.”
“With her overlays still in place, we are bound to her dying wishes.”
“Sugar Music.”
“Vora Mbuntu's task must be completed.”
“The girl will take us where we need to go.”
“And the Stitchlife there?”
“She's powerful.”
“Is she willing?”
“If the girl can reach her.”
*****
Molly heard the bloodhounds' howling.
She waited on the edge of the rolling-hilled 'Fills, but Vora didn't come.
Then, squinting in the near-noon light while the biting flies buzzed, Molly saw her. Vora suddenly appeared out of the air. She was half-transparent, and the ruins of the dead city behind her showed right through. Vora wore her wreath, and Molly wondered how, since she could reach up and feel that it was still on her own head. Molly ignored all the strangeness and ran to embrace Vora, but her little arms wrapped around nothing and she fell right through the witch. When Molly turned around and looked up, Vora was still there.
“It's time to go, Molly,” she said.
