Migration

Matthew

On the edge of the clearing, next to a large wedge-shaped rock – its edges smoothed from centuries of wind and rain, and the more recent touchings of hands and feet that caressed its cool surface or clambered across it to sit on the large flat top – two Hawthorne bushes twisted and twined about each other. Their scrawny trunks swirled three times around, before energetically lancing this way and that in a thousand bristles that exploded with bright red and rich crimson berries. Matthew had studied their shared existence for hours, one native and one synthesised, marvelling at the closeness of the match, comparing the slightly too red red with the deeper, dirtier crimson as they both danced in the breeze with the blue sky behind them.

He wondered how on earth the modified tree had come to be here. One stray tree in the middle of the whole forest, next to an ordinary rock on the edge of one clearing, very much like all the other clearings. Had it been blown here all these miles by the wind, carried high up on the currents of air between here and the managed savannahs? Had it been dropped carelessly by a bird, or fallen from the pack of some unknown traveller, fifty perhaps sixty years earlier?

As he thought, he tumbled a small pebble over and over the fingers in his right hand. He had done it for as long as he could remember, and although the stones had changed over time, after each one was absentmindedly dropped or left in some forgotten place, the feeling of comfort it gave never left him. Up, flip, tuck and roll under. Up, flip, tuck and roll under. Measuring the tiny variations in touch and temperature as he did so.

Today, the clearing was buzzing with the aftermath of a two-day foraging trip. Sorting, packing and storing, the first preparations for another winter, and of course the excitement about the arrival of the new girl. He swivelled around slightly on his perch and watched her for a while, sitting with Jennifer and telling her story, making friendly and enthusiastic introductions to the rest of the camp as they drifted by. She seemed sweet. So young. They got younger and younger every time. She was, doubtless as useless as all the other fresh arrivals, made naive and helpless by a youth spent wrapped in the contrived liberty of AarBee.

She glanced over to him from time to time and he sensed her desire to meet him and prove her devotion. They all did this. It was flattering but he had never really gotten used to it. For someone living in, and leading, such a close and interdependent community, he wasn't much of a people person. It didn't come naturally to him. He had always felt affectionate and compassionate, he enjoyed being a parent to so many children, but he was always one step away from belonging, like he was watching and feeling from some place beyond himself, some place nobody else could reach. As a result, whilst he knew he was loved and respected by the group, he was aware that the real laughter and foolishness, the camaraderie and love, the embraces and tears, often happened in the places and moments he wasn't part of. There was a disconnectedness, a fundamental loneliness that sat in the shadows of every moment he spent with other people, that only really subsided when he was on his own, out in the wilds, focussed on the mundane and automatic routines of survival.

Deep in this thought, his gaze drifted slowly across the scene. There were so many of them now, perhaps as many as three thousand, based mainly at this camp, but also scattered between the two caves that sat a little further downstream and the tiny outpost in the hills. It worked well like that, people could move about as they pleased, joining the hustle and bustle of the main camp with the cave that reached deep into the hillside, each chamber or recess a meeting place, a classroom, a bakery or a place to sleep, or alternatively heading up to the outpost if they needed a quieter existence. The foraging and small game was good at the main camp. Rabbits, pigeon and river fish were plentiful, and there was easily enough to support and replenish them. But up at the outpost, where the landscape hardened up and the wind nipped at your ears even in summertime, the bigger game roamed freely. Once in a while, residents from the outpost would emerge from the trees with slings and sleds overflowing with deer, hare, wild boar and elk, once even a bear, and the whole group would come together to celebrate and share stories and information well into the night.