When we hold each other.., p.1
When We Hold Each Other Up, page 1
When We Hold Each Other Up
Phoebe Wagner
Android Press
Copyright © 2023 by Phoebe Wagner
Published by Android Press
Eugene, Oregon
www.android-press.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of Android Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Printing, 2023
Cover Art by Brianna Castagnozzi
Edited by Justine Norton-Kertson
ISBN 978-1958121160 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1958121177 (epub)
Please respect the rights of the author and the hard work they’ve put into writing and editing the stories in this book. Do not copy or distribute, and do not post or share online. If you like the book and want to share it with friends, please consider buying additional copies.
Contents
Dedication
Part I
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
Part II
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
Part III
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
Epilogue
For the partner, Andrew.
I wrote this book while settling on the unceded land of the Susquehannock people. I also acknowledge the people of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas—as well as the other people seeking refuge in this area as the traditional custodians of the land I occupy. I pay respect to their elders past, present, and emerging.
Part I
Starlight guard you; sunlight guide you.
Chapter One
When I first met Erhent, he killed half the apple orchard. That’s how Granmum guessed he was more than a mostly dead body, curled at the gnarled base of my favorite apple tree, his fingers dug into the dirt like roots.
Granmum hefted the pickaxe over her shoulder. “Soul-eater.”
I touched a fruit-heavy branch, turning brown with his each sleeping breath. “They don’t eat, Gran.”
“Steal your soul all the same.”
He was taking something from the trees, that was true. A thirteenth rotted in the top orchard row. Looking back, I know he would have chosen that spot carefully, a place that needed healing even as he fled. In that moment then, he simply looked like another Harmonizer here to take and make balance.
I picked a soft apple and chucked it, splattering the bark beside his head.
He jerked, rolled away, and somehow flipped onto his feet, except his balance didn’t catch up with him. He staggered and fell to his bum.
Gran raised an eyebrow. She shifted the pickaxe, ready to swing.
He panted, his bright eyes flicking between us. Stories said the eyeshine meant he’d fed recently. “Is this land kept?”
I pointed at the dozen dying trees. “You killed a whole row. You regularly find rows of apple trees?”
He flinched, lowering his gaze. “It was dark. I was running, lost.”
Gran twisted the pickaxe. “It’s time to get lost again.”
He pulled himself upright using the tree. Wood came loose in his hand, sponging apart with new rot. He wasn’t tall by their standards, maybe even shorter than me, and I still had growing to happen. His dark clothes hung loose on his thin body, and gray streaked the hair around his face and ears. Usually, they looked young and fit, so either he was very old or outcast.
He swayed and braced against the trunk. Since it didn’t crumble to dust, he must not have truly fed on it, though from his trembling hands, he needed the energy. Not that I knew for sure, really, I had only heard the stories of his kind from Uncle Miguel, along with the whispered afterthought—don’t let them touch you. Ever.
He took a deep breath, straightened, and stepped backward. “I’m sorry. I’ll balance the orchard when—when I can.” His head dipped as if he knew as well as my Gran that he couldn’t. She huffed as he walked from the orchard even as his steps slowed from sure to staggering.
I counted down: three, two, one—
He collapsed.
While I’d never seen one of his kind so starved, I’d witnessed enough people on their last legs. Gran and I waited. She spun the pickaxe in her hands.
I whispered, “You aren’t going to kill him, are you?”
The axe stopped mid-twirl. “Never kill a Harmonizer. He must not be part of the city’s clan, but even so, they’ll come for whoever drew blood. Balance, always balance.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Wait here.”
She inspected his body, nudged him. He didn’t move, so she hooked him with the pickaxe and flipped him over. He still breathed, the condensation visible.
After a ten-count, she pierced the pickaxe through his coat and dragged him over the orchard hill.
I picked the rotten apples. Some would make applesauce, maybe cider. Tomorrow, I’d come back with a saw to trim the now-lifeless branches. Only spring would tell if the trees survived. We’d collect seeds to plant another row.
Half an hour later, Granmum returned and helped me gather the soft fruit.
“We could take him in,” I said. “I have energy to spare. He might help us—”
Gran dropped the apples and snatched me by the shoulders before I could duck. She shook me. “Never say such a thing! There were times when we had to make those deals—give lifeforce and let them feed. You don’t! I’ve worked to make sure of it.”
I looked away. “Sorry.” My Uncle Miguel had told me such stories, of course, how generations ago, the warming Earth had shed them from the glaciers to feed on all of humanity and our waste, our excess. Some stories said thanks to their touch, humanity had come back into balance with the rest of the living world. But Granmum told other stories, stories of how her parents had made deals for food, water, shelter by letting the Harmonizers feed off their bodies with a single touch. Gran made the Harmonizers sound threatening, but this one just looked weak. Uncle Miguel would say that’s when any creature is most dangerous.
Granmum grunted as she stooped to one knee and collected the fruit. “Forget we found him. It will only cause trouble at home.”
Back then, home was eleven of us, Granmum and Grandmother, Uncle Miguel, Octavia, and the pack who shared the home: three cats (Sierra, Dusk, Star), two coydogs (Serenade and Crooner), and a horse. I’d arrived on the horse four years ago, so I called him Brother.
We’d just come to the woods to pass the fall and winter a few weeks ago. Summer traveling the valley had been good, with plentiful foraging, harvesting, and sunny days fishing. We all felt strong. Even so, I loved winter best because the work turned quiet, full of stories. There was more time to make beautiful things. Granmum had taught me to knit two winters ago, and this year, she said I’d learn to sew and quilt. Uncle Miguel offered to teach me whittling and had new stories for me to memorize.
I cradled the firmest apples in the tail of my shirt, but I slowed at the sight of the cave’s cook smoke. “Gran, you don’t think he’s the reason the others haven’t reached us?” The first snow had come much too early, but so far, only we had made shelter in the caves. Usually fifty came, the number the elders (handed down from the Harmonizers long ago) agreed the land could support.
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t be so weak if he’d fed on so many humankind. Now, you forget about him. We have applesauce to make.”
Even if the nightly chores kept my brain busy, my dreams refused to forget. Uncle Miguel, the area’s historymaker, kept this theory that all stories are about the same basic thing: a stranger appears or someone goes on a journey. Maybe this Harmonizer was the stranger of a new story.
That night, in my dream, he comes to the cave entrance while I’m on watch, even though it’s dream logic since I’m still too young for watching until I turn sixteen in the spring.
He offers his hand—it seems to flicker, sometimes gloved and sometimes bare skin. Granmum says never to touch a Harmonizer’s skin because that’s how they feed on you. I take his hand, anyway. In that flickering, I’m not sure if we’re in the cave or some sort of narrow path, tall buildings on either side.
I struggled awake in the middle of the night, the fire burned low. I’d dreamed of the city before, but I’d always been alone in the dreams.
The watch was supposed to stoke the hearth, so that meant Grandmother minded the cave entrance since she always fell asleep. I used the hunting skills Octavia taught me and carefully, slow as a stretching cat, eased from under my knitted blankets. I clutched one around me and picked up my boots. The smooth cave floor made no noise as I padded to the entrance. My guess about Grandmother proved right. She slept in a chair tilted against a boulder with the cats, Sierra, Dusk, and Star, creating a blanket on her lap.
What I hadn’t planned for was Brother dozing in the moonlight. His ears twitched as I crossed the threshold. A nicker made me stiffen. I glared at him, and he nodded his head as if chiding. He knew nighttime was not for riding.
I crept over and nuzzled the side of his face. “I’m just checking on the orchard.”
He blustered. I shushed him and tried to leave again, but he nipped my hair. Before I had found Gran, two other traveling bands had left me when I made too much trouble and wouldn’t let them eat Brother during
I motioned for Brother to come, and he clopped from the cave, each striking hoof making me wince. Only the cats raised their heads, though. Their bright eyes looked so much like the Harmonizer’s gaze my stomach fluttered. I shouldn’t be doing this. Granmum would know somehow, and I’d get a lecture about how we needed to learn new ways and be like the coydogs who never went off alone, or some such. But Uncle Miguel also told me the old stories said to always give hospitality to strangers in case they might be a Harmonizer looking to see if you lived in balance. What if we’d made the Harmonizer angry?
I asked Brother if I could ride, and he let me pull up by his mane. We trotted through the crisp night. Moonlight reflected off the thin snow, so nothing seemed truly dark. A good night for daring.
I swung off Brother at the orchard. He nickered and nosed the dying trees. They looked worse than this morning, the way hands swell with age.
At the orchard’s top row, I followed the drag marks while Brother sniffed the trail. A cottonwood copse waited in the meadow’s heart, so I only half-watched the trail, assuming Gran would have left him with some shelter and deadwood to eat.
When I tripped, I thought I must’ve hit a tussock. Except, he moaned.
I gasped and scrambled back. Brother cantered over and nudged my head.
The black gash in the snow remained still, and so did I.
The cottonwoods were a dark smudge a hundred yards off. The Harmonizer couldn’t walk a dozen steps. If Gran had left him here, with no shelter and nothing his kind could eat… she’d meant for him to die.
I’d seen Gran kill before. A mountain lion that wouldn’t leave us alone, a rabid coyote, deer when the herds swelled too large. Once, a person. A group of men had come, searching for minerals. We expected the Harmonizers to stop them, but when none arrived, Gran and Octavia saw them off. But Gran never made violence without reason.
But what reason had this Harmonizer given except for what he was? Yes, he’d hurt the orchard, but he hadn’t known. He hadn’t come to balance us, and others said the Harmonizers took less and less each decade as the Earth settled. We didn’t need to fear him, even if Uncle Miguel’s stories still told their warnings. The seasons of starving and loss were balancing, others agreed—for the most part. New stories about the city to the east had circulated the fires as we’d made our way through the valley to the winter cave, but Uncle Miguel had hushed them. Now, so many that usually wintered with us hadn’t arrived yet…
I crouched. He didn’t move. If not for the moan, I would have assumed he was dead.
I touched his shoulder, then nudged him. When he remained still, I hovered a hand over his nose, and his hot breath still blew strong.
“I’m going to move you to a better place, okay? I’m not trying to hurt you.”
I hooked my arms under his shoulders and paused, tense and waiting for him to turn on me—nothing. Gran would have me memorizing lessonstories again if she found out I came back, but those same stories said to help all, from the drought-thirsty tree to the wounded wolf. I dragged him toward the copse with Brother trotting back and forth as if urging me. By the time we reached the trees, I had sweat through my clothes and the cold bit.
I leaned him against a dying cottonwood I couldn’t stretch my arms around. Lightning must have struck the trunk that summer because it’d split, half severed to rot in the patchy snow. Stories said the Harmonizers could feed on trees and other living things when needed, even though they called themselves mankind’s predator in the old stories. Hopefully, the cottonwoods offered enough.
I wrapped my blanket around him. I could get warm in the cave, but who knew when he would feel warm again.
Brother offered his back, and we went home.
If Gran suspected, she didn’t say anything the next morning. We ate hot applesauce for breakfast, then I went to the stream to haul water. Usually Brother helped me, but he wasn’t around, even when I called. My heartbeat quickened—what if the Harmonizer had taken him?—but when I climbed into a tree stand, the cottonwood tops stuck like fingers over the orchard hill. He’d have had to eat all those trees and more before he could have taken down a horse quick-witted as Brother.
I lugged the water pails from the bottom of the hollow, careful to keep from rushing or grumbling that Brother decided he had better plans. Grandmother said that rushing through work and life was what crumbled away at the planet. Everything more efficient, more quick, so they could make us keep going and going, she’d say if Granmum let her talk about the past. Granmum would contradict and say something like, There’s a time to rush, but you’re smart enough to know when that is. Resting, listening, that’s just as important. Both of them had been born after what Uncle Miguel’s histories called the Post-Capitalist era, let alone the Turbo- and Petro-Capitalist eras before that, but they kept the stories. I’d learn more about those times when I turned sixteen in the spring and completed my required visit to the nearest Harmonizer city. I’d give an exchange of energy and learn about how our ancestors came together to balance and stabilize the world. Uncle Miguel promised I would meet more storytellers and learn what taking such a title would mean. The city librarians would give me stories to memorize and see if I had any knack for it. If I did, I might be invited to study in the city. I could always learn from Uncle Miguel and other storytellers we met along our trails, but I could learn so much more in the city, even if Uncle Miguel warned it might not suit me and reminded me that the valley needed more storytellers—the city had plenty.
Back then, the words “exchange of energy” meant so little to me. I’d passed the years living and loving the woods and valleys and hills. I’d assumed the city must hold that same kind of love.
I daydreamed of what might have happened to the Harmonizer, if he’d survived the night. Stories said if you did a good turn for a Harmonizer, they were bound to balance by doing you a good turn. Maybe saving him after Gran left him merely balanced the actions and saved us from something bad happening at the cave. I considered ditching my buckets and running to the meadow to check on him, but what if Gran was right about him being dangerous? I didn’t want to bring any harm back to my family at the cave.
Winter and the cave had become linked in my mind like creeks and willows. Since Gran took me in, we celebrated solstice in the rocky warmth. Yes, we would find snow in other places, and lately the summer fields had been colder, but the early darkness, the cozy fires, snuggling under the furs and knit blankets—that happened in the cave. There’s also the silence. Summer’s loudness is special, but the winter quiet soothes me. This crisp morning, I only heard the stream, the slosh of water pails, the thwump of crusty snow slipping off spruce branches.
I felt safer in the quiet because when something bad was coming, you know it so far off. Halfway to the cave, a crow cawed, then two more. They burst from a dead oak tree. I paused and closed my eyes, letting my senses adjust.
A thrumming rumble, headed toward the cave. Uncle Miguel imitated that noise when he told stories of what helped wipe out humanity: machines, running on fossil fuels. I’d seen their rusted husks sunk into the dirt, but never a running one.
Since the rumble cut me off from the cave entrance, I left the water and circled to the cave’s back, scaling the hollow’s slope that turned into the mouth. I huddled behind mossy rocks as the vehicle struggled along the slushy path. It had an open back, almost like a sled. Condensation plumed black and made my nose wrinkle. That sharp smell had steered me from gathering beside plenty of waterways.
