Nathan Lucas

No Way of Knowing

The sun sat low in the sky, slowly rising over the distant ridgeline. Isha handled the locket slowly, feeling the worn metal in her hand. A gift from her mother the locket was in the shape of a heart, made of plain brass, hardly anything special. The locket was sealed shut with a small ball of burgundy wax. Isha ran her thumb over the smooth wax, an edge of the latch underneath sticking out through the seal. Isha had never opened the locket, it had remained sealed since it was given to her mother, maybe earlier than that, there was no way of knowing. No way of knowing, Isha mulled over the phrase, it was all she had ever heard of life before the fall. Her mother was just old enough to have seen it but still too young to have concrete memories. Her mother had told her stories that she, in turn, had passed on to Isha, stories of electricity, aircraft, and a hundred other miracles that were nothing but stories now. That wasn’t entirely true, Isha had seen aircraft flying over once or twice, but nobody knew where they were coming from or going to. "No way of knowing", Isha repeated the words to herself under her breath. Nobody seemed to really know what had happened, although everyone had their own pet theory. Some liked to blame some foreign power, names like Russia and China were tossed around. Others liked to conjure up religious arguments, that we were sinners that had angered God. The most common and, so Isha thought most reasonable, was some sort of climate disaster, although opinion was split about even on the nature of the disaster, some said the world warmed while others contended that it cooled, nobody was really sure though. Isha’s eyes traced a path along the ridgeline, the sun gradually illuminating more of the valley below, the leafy tendrils of the pine forest stretching up the slopes of the mountains, reaching almost up to the sky until the rocky crags rose up out of the ground to stop them short of the peaks. No way of knowing, Isha stuffed the locket back into the pocket of her worn leather jacket, a hand me down from people long dead. Nobody really knew why they had abandoned the cities, even the oldest of Isha’s family had been born well after their move into the mountains, something had made facing the brute forces of nature a seemingly safer alternative than life in the cities. Despite that, life in the mountains wasn’t particularly safe, Isha and her family were always on the move, often trudging along the top of a ridge for miles, looking down deep into green valleys brimming with forests, dotted with the occasional lake, it wasn’t uncommon for older or younger members of the group to slip and be lost to the valleys below, wildlife was an ever-present threat as well, although the bears tended to stay in the forests and avoid the exposed ledges Isha called home. No way of knowing, Isha kicked a rock and watched it fall down the slope, faintly hearing it crash into the underbrush, the sun was now fully above the ridge and Isha looked around, back towards the camp. She sat and stared, watching a thin line of smoke rise from a campfire into the sky, a leftover from the night before, certainly, nobody was starting a fire now, they had to be moving in a few hours before the afternoon storms swelled up, the ridgeline was no place to be when the sky bellowed and threatened to strike down anyone exposed. That was the other great danger of the mountains, anyone out on the rocks had to be always alert for a sudden storm, often the simple sound of thunder would send everyone scurrying down into the forest below for shelter. Isha looked back to the horizon, the sun casting its rays into the valley below, lighting up the dark corners of the forest, turning the alpine lakes into shimmering jewels. The group had recently faced a great deal of difficulty, food had been scarce over the last few months, and winter was creeping in, threatening the very existence of the group, even now the streams and lakes were often frozen over in the morning, a beautiful omen. Isha stuck her hand back into her pocket and felt the locket again, the faint engraving on one side, almost imperceptible with the gradual wear the locket had endured. No way of knowing, Isha pulled her hand out with the locket, inspecting it, watching the morning sunlight reflecting off the only real heirloom she had. Isha picked at the wax a little, dropping a little piece of red into the dust at her feet. For years she hadn’t dared to even dream of opening the locket, she had no idea what was inside; neither had her mother. When she had received it her mother had told her the locket could save them all in a moment of peril, that it was special, and not to be used unless there was no real alternative. Many times had Isha fiercely gripped the locket during troubles, a bear stalking the group, moving silently through the dark forest, a fire threatening to surround them, even something as banal as a fever, Isha had always kept it close. She picked at the wax again, a small piece lodged under her dirty nail, “No way of knowing” she muttered under her breath, the latch gradually becoming exposed. Isha’s mother had treated that as a motto, responding to every issue with a sort of resignation to the impossibility of their situation, always facing the unknown with bravery. Isha picked off the last piece of wax, hearing it hit her boot as she stared at the latch for what felt like an eternity, debating whether to open the locket or not. She carefully unhooked the latch and paused for a second, one last chance to leave it closed, she could gather up the scraps of wax and melt them back together, saving the locket for another day. Isha gathered her wits and slowly opened the locket and peered inside the little brass container to find a name, the name of some brand long ago forgotten by the world, nothing but a few long meaningless names etched into the cheap brass. Isha dropped the locket, joining the wax and the dust in the ground at the top of the ridge as she stared off into the horizon.