I heard the pounding rush of toxic fog in my ears. I felt a scouring dust storm pressing in around me. I was like a bug, pinned and wriggling under Solani's all-knowing gaze.
They turned their attention back to the cable dangling from the metal trapezoid. Again and again they wrenched it down, let it roll back up, and the whirring inside got a little bit louder.
They were so nonchalant. Like their history as a wanderer was obvious. Like I was slow for failing to pick up on all of the clues. Like I was a child, and the brutal cruelty of life as a wanderer was ordinary.
It made me furious.
For the first time in my life I wanted to hit someone. That face, clean like polished marble, mocked me with every grunt. I was so sick and tired of not knowing anything. Even when I bore my soul and showed the deepest, most vulnerable part of myself to Solani, it was all a part of this fucked up ouroborous of history. Like fate had me in chains that I couldn't see or feel.
That was a kind of prison too, but I didn't exactly understand what kind. If it meant that I was two years away from being an individual again, then so be it. Whatever this frontier had in store couldn't be any worse than wandering the Open Wastes. I would put up with almost anything to cleave myself from this wretched cult.
"After you." Solani gestured at the metal trapezoid as they went to grab a second one from the locker.
The trapezoid buzzed like a cicada, but the outside was completely still.
I grabbed the loop of cable and tried to pull it down like Solani had.
It didn't budge.
I flexed my twiggy arms and watched my meager cords of muscle strain like a fly pushing a boulder.
Nothing.
"Don't try to crank it. Pull the other side."
I did like they said, and found that the cable clicked out in even increments. I spooled out enough cable to make a loop for my foot, and found a way to stand in it while holding my sack of food.
I stood up, slowly leaning my weight onto the cable.
My center of gravity lurched forward, sweeping my second foot off the ground. I gripped the top of the cable with my frail vice of a hand. My foot swung forward and the rest of my body swung out left to compensate. I was more horizontal than vertical, and spinning. The feeble tension of my foot and grip barely managed to keep me from swinging off onto the forest floor below.
I shut my eyes to seal out the whooshing landscape. I felt the sack of food nestled between my body and the cable, and just prayed that nothing would fall out. I pitched and leaned and swung and spun, and I felt satchels flying out of my sack as I lost all sense of up and down. Each thump of banana leaves felt like a knife in my gut.
My forearms burned with exertion, and my fingers were numbing.
I imagined myself tumbling down into the forest, stabbed through with stiff branches. I imagined myself wrapped in muslin, then I imagined myself mulched into shit.
I grit my teeth and flexed my thin sheet of bumpy abs. I forced my foot down, trying to push myself back upright. I spun, and my whole body stuck out in a taut horizontal bar. My starved calves and gaunt thighs screamed, but they were too weak to scream against the wail of the abyss.
Hot blood thudded in my ears. There was a horrible grinding sound as my teeth slipped past each other. I felt something pop in my knee as all of the force in my body shot through it. My foot levered down, and as I loosened my grip on the cable I was slowly able to get upright.
YOU ARE READING
The Mushroom Wars
خيال (فانتازيا)My mother used to tell me that it wasn't too late. She'd tell me bedtime stories that wailed about everything that was lost. She told me that our generation - the hapless sacks born into this godawful mess - could save it. She whispered the same lie...
