A Metal Spring

In turned out to be rather fortunate, in the end, that the King was not only very vain, but rather stupid too. When the necklace arrived with the morning's parcels, his staff (not so bright either) opened it with the routine of those used to receiving such gifts. Offerings, bribes and bestoyings are the daily bread of the King. This necklace appeared at first to be just another such present, though it did cause the slightest of pause amongst the King’s court for its unusual craftsmanship. It came inside a wooden box, with no note accompanying it. This too was a little odd. But the necklace was unmistakably beautiful, and there was the general consensus that such an object would befit their King well.

The necklace shone (strangely, they may have thought, were they thinkers) as if it held a light within. Sand-cast silver bars sat beside heavy beads of copper and gold. Green, yellow and blue gemstones lay half-buried in the metal like coral upon a reef. Blinking and alive. From the necklace hung a heart shaped pendant, smooth and separate from the coarseness of the rest. The Kings own emblem lay in its centre, pressed into the shining metal. The King certainly would be very pleased, thought his subjects.

The King was indeed delighted to receive the necklace. His third birthday of the year had recently passed and his Great Uncle had not sent anything. The King assumed, with an unusual amount of generosity, that this necklace must be a gift from this Uncle, and, despite there being no indication to confirm this assumption, ordered his staff to call off the termination of said Uncle. They replied, unfortunately, it was too late, but the thought was there. And what a generous thought it had been.

After some time spent admiring the necklace, stroking its surface and examining the radiant jewels which sung coaxingly to him of petroleum rainbows, he called to have the necklace placed upon him and a mirror brought, in order that he may admire his new reflection.

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When she’d first come up with her plan- or plot?- I thought she must’ve found a rather big rat or pigeon that day, for all the red had returned to her cheeks and her eyes shone. At first, I rather begrudged her for it. Begrudged her bright-eyed, rosy, rat-hogging. It’d been weeks since I’d eaten anything close to meat! The claggy, weed-root mixture we got by on then was not something which caused the stomach to sing. And it could certainly not bring colour back into cold cheeks.

But when she ate her own mixture with the usual starved fervour I knew then it was another sort of secret which had lent her the brightness. So I watched her curiously, trying to read it in her gestures- as if her slouched shoulder would spell it out for me. She finished eating and gazed into her container for a long while. A once-blue piece of plastic, it was not much to look at. It had a jagged rim softened by slurps and a shape which bowed permanently to her hands. Faded smudges which once had meant something. Maybe, it had once held ice cream… but- that was too painful a thought to sit with because it led to lots of other thoughts, much like a fast-moving puddle which threatened to wash an ill-placed foot out to sea with its owner. That couldn’t have been her thought, surely. No, she was not sad. She seemed to be almost grimacing with gladness. Looking closer, it seemed to be that her eyes held all the fire responsible for warming her cheeks.

Perhaps I could’ve asked her then. Maybe she would’ve told me. But it's quite likely she wouldn’t have also. Maybe I would’ve tried to stop her. When I think about it now, I am not sure. Either way, it wasn’t too long before her flushed cheeks faded and were replaced by yellowing, cracked skin. She did her best to hide from me the blisters which spread across her body. But her eyes continued to dance with a stubborn light, that was extinguished only in death.

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I have to set out in the dark not-yet-morning before they wake in order not to be seen and also because it is a long way to walk and I want to allow enough time. I work slowly, I do not want to miss anything. Often, what I need is buried beneath large piles of rubble and this is what takes the most time: moving the rubble to get at what lies beneath. At the beginning, I would spend a day moving it from one area to another, only to realise I’d need to move the same pile again a few days later to get to what it now lay atop. All rubble looked the same to me then. This is not true though and ignorance is not bliss: it is time lost to repetition. But one day I noticed an antenna sticking out from a rusted, brownish mass which was once perhaps a bus. All the rubble may look the same, but one can usually tell apart cars and other automobiles for the strange, metal boulders they form. Perhaps it is something that happens to their fuel tanks during an explosion. But I’ve never once found a motorcycle boulder. I won’t pretend to understand it.

I only noticed the antenna when it almost took my eye out. I recoiled, startled, and took a good look at it. It looked like a sleepy sort of “Zzz” you’d see above a snoring cartoon and I remember thinking just that and being startled all over again. It was really the thought itself that almost took my eye out, if you know what I mean. I’d not thought about cartoons in such a long time that it made me feel quite sick and I had to sit down. That was not a productive day. I think I found a single diamante, clinging to a threadbare scrap of denim. When I found myself rolling that same bus-boulder around for a second time, it took the “Zzz”, thwacking me sharply in the shin before I clued in. I got more methodic after that. I couldn’t afford to lose another day to the nausea of nostalgia.

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By the time of his fourth annual birthday, the King was dying. His fourth birthday festival was called Spring, though no-one in his court knew why. There was a general understanding amongst his subjects that springs were a metal structure capable of supporting a great many things. Spring was thought then, by the more expressive minds within the castle, to be a sort of metaphor for the King himself. The implications of such a thought of course required impressive mental gymnastics. Those who were somewhat less flexible of mind took the easier route of assuming the King had invented the spring- an easy enough accomplishment for one responsible for a great many inventions such as the radio, the fork and all five of the nation’s card games.

When a person exists their whole life in such an utterly delusional setting as our revered King, it is inevitable that this delusion will extend to encompass their experience of their own body. The King had never had an illness in his life, at least to the extent that he was never once aware of being ill. His early interactions with sadness had simply resulted in the termination of the offending cause. His mother and many a female cousin (there had been one remaining, but she died of stress several years ago) all met their end this way. And so it came to be that as his body grew sicker, the King was completely incapable of recognising that he was, in fact, dying.

Dizzy spells were the fault of the castle foundations. The King ordered the removal of all paintings which refused to keep still. His shrinking appetite was the fault of the food tasting terrible, and eleven cooks were terminated in as many weeks. When the King bathed, others were tasked with his washing, so, he did not see the blisters as they began appearing, and the bathing staff were both too terrified and too stupid to make mention of it. When he gazed at his face in the mirror, his eyes went to the shining heart which sat resting at his throat, so he failed to notice his own sunken cheeks and yellowing skin. You can imagine that, had he noticed, he would’ve simply sent for a new mirror.

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Her death came in the middle of the coldest months. The ash-ice layer was particularly bad that year as the castle had been lighting their fires round the clock, and ash fell thickly upon the wet ground, where it quickly froze: hard, grey and covering everything. I’d had to travel far to find ground I could dig into. It took a long while because my body was weak, and I had only a metal shard which left rusty splinters in my palm. I had eyed off our tarp, battered and flapping in the wind. I wanted to bury her in something, so that it was not her bare skin against the dirt. But I knew I would not be long behind her without the tarps flimsy protection and though this knowledge held an appeal of its own, I am glad now I lived long enough to see the King die. Long enough to understand what she had done.

With the ash from the castle had come the rumour that the King was ill. No-one believed it at first; hope was long atrophied from underuse. But when his peeling face appeared illuminated in the sky for his Spring address, the talk of his sickness flew across the land with the ardour of a caged bird newly freed. When I had glimpsed the necklace, shining there from its perch around his throat, a strangled sound escaped my throat and startled me. I had not laughed in a long time.

There is word from the North that flowers are returning; spreading across the plains. It is my current hope that some day soon I may lay collect one of every kind and lay them on the ground where she rests.

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I kick aside some dirt clumps and my joints crack with the gesture. All of my bones are weary. They tell me so everyday. It is not only the radiation which makes them ache, it is longing. They long for rain which doesn’t scorch the ground. They long to swim, and fuck and dance. They ache with the memory of these things.

Shifting through the scorched rubble, my hands are bound to stem their bleeding. I have to move down through the layers of matter which were once roofs, walls: homes. Many unlikely things remain intact. A dog’s collar. A guitar neck. A baby’s shoe. I see all of these things as I search, though I try not to. I keep shifting the parts until they spit out what I seek. I pretend I am a bower-bird, hollow-boned, toothless and searching only for that which shines. I think of the jewellery which lies hidden beneath my feet. Precious sediment which sits soaking, steeping in the same toxicity which shreds my skin and turns my teeth to chalk.

Before I allow myself to rest here, as another unapologetic “Zzzz” amongst the debris, I must finish the necklace. It is close to complete. It is both killing me, and all that is keeping me alive. A few more pieces to be found, melted down, reformed. That’s all that remains for the heart to take shape. My offering to our King... a just reward for all his work. A resplendent, radioactive reaping of seeds sown in selfishness. Sometimes, it feels like it is more than he deserves. In some ways it is.

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