The Wall

The days are endless now. Burning, blistering and endless, seeping pointlessly into one another without end. The one true end arrives only with death, which comes sooner than it once had. Or so I’ve heard. Rumours, they are just rumours of the past because that is all we have left – the words we speak to one another that distort and shift over time like waves, becoming what each person needs them to be so the truth is malleable. Once upon a time the weather moved between seasons, shifting between warmth and cold like the breeze. People lived many decades until their faces were so altered with time that they were unrecognizable from those they had been in their youth. Or so I’ve heard.

Here, beyond the Wall, life is brief and violent. Flaring out in anguish under the furious, aching sun that hangs swollen in the sky. Beating us all into primitive beasts thirsting for basic survival. Though why we persist I do not know. I have heard that inside the Wall life is similar to before the Fall. The great illness that swept across continents and wrenched the old and the young alike into its cracking, brittle hands of death. The world was divided – those who have and those who do not. Those who accept the status quo and those who rebelled. Those who were rich stayed in their ivory towers and shut the rest of us out. The Wall now divides us and no one dares to cross, certain death awaits on the other side. Some of us banded together and formed small communities, we had to, in order to survive once the virus had razed most of us into early graves. My place out here has changed many times over the years.

I always dwell at the edge of any group. Those who I would call family perished long ago, their bodies decayed, desiccated and forgotten. There exist friendships of a sort out here, though I do not care to connect with those who I will lose. Making connections with others is a fruitless task, so I keep my head down, ready to leave in a moment should the group be overpowered by another or internal discord scratches them down from the inside.

In the absence of congeniality, hard work is what I contribute to the communities I have belonged to. When I have concluded my labours I walk. I walk for no purpose other than to quiet the clanging in my brain that bays and bellows when I am still. In the movement I can simply exist and be.

Today in my wanderings, like so many days before it, I am drawn to the Wall. I run my hands along the unyielding concrete slabs towering above my head. My thoughts often wonder about the places beyond the Wall, but having no point of reference for beauty and ease, my mental ramblings stall.

The trees beside the Wall are wizened and stunted. Small, dark leaves shooting between the barbs that jut out at vicious angles. They are like us. Hardened and diminished, only just surviving. There is a drain that lets out just ahead of me, though with the rains so scarce I have never seen more the a dribble wash through it. I wonder what the purpose may be and had once thought to try for access to beyond the Wall. A foolish mental exercise that was quickly thwarted by thick, brutal barbed wire and locked gates of implacable steel.

Today I notice something different. At the edge something glints in the sun, a bright iridescence gleaming amongst the browns and reds of the barren landscape. I am drawn to the shimmering light but quickly halt as I see what the item rests upon.

A person from beyond the Wall. I have never seen one before, though there is talk of heavily armoured guards who sometimes stray beyond the impenetrable safety of the Wall to recruit from the Outlanders for menial jobs and hard labour in factories and farms. Some see it as an opportunity, the chance to leave the Outer Lands and move to a heavenly space. Others are convinced that our people are worked to death in a form of indentured servitude for the Others. I have never seen the guards or anyone from the Wall, but I know instantly that this person lying prone on the harsh, sandy ground is not from my lands.

The person does not move and for a moment I am sure they are dead. They wear pale clothes that, while torn and marred with streaks of dirt, are made from fine materials. They are like new under the filth and there is never anything new in the Outer Lands. We scavenge, we make things out of the tough pelts of the few remaining wild creatures that exist in these harsh conditions with us. We create out of necessity, nothing it beautiful or refined. It serves a purpose, or it is not bothered with.

After watching the person for some moments I notice the glinting is something metallic around their neck and it is ever so slightly moving with the labored breath of its owner. This is not a trophy of a hunter but something that looks like it was made just for the sake of owning something beautiful. Inching closer I touch the item around their neck, it is a silver metal string and at the end hangs a metal heart. Jewelry. The word, long unused, comes into my mind. My parent, before they succumbed to an infected wound, had worn a golden band around their finger. It had belonged to their grandmother and would have gone to me had someone not swiped it while they drew ragged final breaths. There were a few pieces that had been passed down from generations of Outlanders but jewelry is a rarity, and if you owned such an item you would be sure to keep it secret lest some covetous other slit your throat and disappear into the short hours of night.

I place my hand across their chest, I feel the breath. In and out. Barely there, but still somehow alive. I lift them up against my shoulder, planting my feet in the earth and press up. The walk back to my secluded hut is an arduously slow progress as their weight presses as relentlessly as the sun scorching above us. We make it eventually and I ease them down onto a ragged fur blanket.

My mouth is sand, I go to the small bucket with murky, thick water in it that has been collected from the sparse rains. When I was young I would marvel at the legends of people in the Before having water so fresh, clean and in such unlimited quantities that they pushed their waste through a series of tubes with it.

I collect a small piece of bark from a tree outside and fashion it into a cup and gently dribble some of the water into their mouth. They swallow, though their action is unconsciously done. Nothing but waiting stretches before us now and I decide to check my closest traps. One has been successful and there is a small furred creature trapped inside.

With my knife I skin the animal quickly. The pelt, though small will be able to be traded for the hard root vegetables that some people manage to coax into life out here. They do not taste like anything, but they are versatile and can be made into many meals that ease the constant hollowness that echoes inside my stomach. As the heavy orange sun begins to dim, I walk back into my hut. They are still unconscious and I place my hand against their chest again to check for breath. The touch must have drawn them from their darkened realm of oblivion because their eyes open. Their eyes surprise me, pale green which seems alarming against their smooth dark skin.

I step back quickly, not wanting to frighten them. I must appear savage and hideous to them, indeed I probably am.

“I…” the voice that emerges is a dry, sharp rasp and I silently offer them the bark cup with water. They struggle and sit up, breathing coming in harsh gasps. Taking the cup, they nod to me but quickly make a face of utter distaste looking into the cup. They shake their head and down the liquid anyway.

“Where am I?” they finally ask. I stare at them for long moments, unsure how to explain their situation. They wait.

“Outer Lands,” my own voice sounds rusty. I use it so rarely, communicating with my current band of outcasts mostly with shrugs and pointing. Why waste words on interaction when you may never see them again?

“Right”. They sigh, as if the answer was already known to them but had wanted confirmation.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” more words than I have spoken in years come out in a hurry. I have never met an Other and curiosity, something I am grossly unfamiliar with, sparks within me.

“I’m Jaiia” they say after a pause. “I am from within the Wall and I was expelled”.

I wait for them to continue, not wanting to burden them with questions but at the same time desperate to know how they ended up here.

“I was classed as an Anomaly. I don’t know how it works here, but in there everyone has very defined roles. Everyone is who they are. You work, you marry, if you are female you bear children, you die. Stability and normality above all else. Our leaders think the plague was caused by the sins of the world. That it was a just God raining hellfire down against those who walked against a natural path. I guess they saw me as a sinner, just for wanting to be who I know I am”.

I stretch my hand out and gently touch their shoulder. Comfort is rarely offered or given out here, but I have vague memories of needing it as a child when my parent would stroke my hair if there was an Upheaval.

“Are you the only one?”

The laugh is harsh and without mirth. “No, not by a long shot. The others are sent to the facility. They either reform, or they never reappear in society. I don’t know of many who reform, the others I assume are dead”.

“Why aren’t you?”

They flinch and I am vaguely aware that this might not be an appropriate question.

“My father is on the High Council and he arranged with some guards to have me exiled. Not because I think he cares at all for me, but rather having my death on his hands would somehow cement his failure as a parent. Better to have me disappear and hope that I survive so he’s not a murderer as well as a failure”.

“Life out here is hard” I say. “It is a struggle, but it is life I guess. You can be whoever you are out here, there are very few rules to live by. We mind our own business and group together if we need to”.

“Freedom” they whisper.

“Of a sort”.

“Any sort of freedom is better than a life where you have no choices. Thank you…I just realised I don’t know your name”.

“Velk”. The word seems unfamiliar, it has been so long since I have uttered it.

“I hope you and I will be friends Velk. I know I will need one to survive out here”.

They smile, an expression I have rarely seen, and I cannot help but try to mirror it. A friend.

Perhaps. It is a concept I have not entertained for so long but a heavy, aching longing cracks open within me and possibility yawns before me. A life beyond mere survival. The world, long established in my mind and reality, has immutably shifted and changed. Nothing will be as it was.