Wasteland

Dry earth crunched under their footfalls. The son tried not to step on the hard desolate cracks that split the earth like a never ending egg hatching. When he mis-stepped and tripped over his own ankle he stumbled forward and fell to knees catching himself with the base of his palms. When mother looked back she merely smiled and held out a hand to help him up. She didn’t scold him or say anything for that matter. In fact, she rarely said anything while they walked. It had been that way as long as the son could remember. When she turned her back to him and continued, he went on skipping over the dry cracks of earth.

The land was flat as far as the son could see and the breeze subtle. The sun had taken some getting used to, but after his skin blistered and healed, then blistered again, he seemed to barely feel the hot rays anymore. Clouds were seldom found in The Flat. When they did and that small fluffy patch of white covered the sun to give them a moment of shade they usually took a rest. They hadn’t seen a cloud for a week. The son inhaled deep through his nose. He could smell dust and a faint aroma of spices, but the most dominant smell was that of iron from the dried blood, crusty in his nostrils. The only sound was that of their footfalls, the sloshing of their water jugs and the faint whistle of the wind. A constant never ending whistle. Mother had said that’s what drove father mad, that he always looked for rain in that whistle, but they wouldn’t stoop so low. Though father was strong, she said they were stronger. The son missed father.

His lips were dry and his tongue pasty. He could still taste last night's meal. They had used their last can of goods. It was something called peaches and though mother exclaimed that it was eleven years expired it would still be fine to eat. It was the best thing he had ever tasted. The brown slices were in a sweet, thick syrup and mother had let him use his finger to get the last drops of nectar. Now though, they had no provisions save for what Earth provided.

Mother stopped and knelt down. She waved her hand motioning for him to come look. He came to inspect alongside her. Between the cracks were thousands of little bugs crawling and squirming around. The sight made the hair of his spine rise.

“Ants,” she said.

“Ants,” he repeated.

She daringly took a handful and put them in her container. The boy was shocked, what if they would hurt her like the red ones he sat on when he was younger. She did this three times until the container was a cluster of ants and sealed it off with the firm lid. Mother smiled as the tickling ants crawled up and down her forearm. She swiped them off with her other hand and got up to continue walking. A rattle broke the familiar sounds of the flat waste. Mother's eyes widened and the son looked around suspiciously, squinting and straining his eyes to see. They spotted it together. Curled into a ball was an animal he had seen a couple times before.

“Snake,” he said.

“Rattlesnake,” she confirmed. She took out the knife that always sat in the pouch at her side. “Meat. He provides.” She flung the blade with such precision that it cut through the head of the snake. She went to gather her blade and their dinner. She put the snake around her neck like a scarf and sheathed her knife. Taking the son's hand they continued walking.

They stopped at sunset when they found a boulder in the ground. She unraveled the snake from her neck and cut it in half. She opened the container that held the now dead pile of ants. Their meal wasn’t as good as the peaches but afterwards he barely felt the growl of his stomach he had gotten used to. They took small sips of their water jugs and laid back.

“Do you know how long we have walked?”

“No.”

“Two months, four days.”

“Oh.”

“I expected to have found water by now.”

“Can we use your locket yet?”

“We must find water first.”

“We have water in our jugs.”

“It is not enough, we need water to last months and years. And that is the last of our drinking water”

“But where do we find that. You said the oceans are gone and they were the biggest.”

She sighed. “I have told you, The oceans at the shore have burned up but somewhere two thirds remain. We are where the oceans once stood right now.”

“Have you seen them?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know there is some left?”

“Faith.”

Mother took the locket from her neck and lifted it over her head. It was gold with little sparkling gems around the heart-shaped edge. She opened it and showed him the interior. Inside were fifteen small cream colored seeds of different shapes and sizes.

“Tell me about the seeds again, mother.”

She smiled wearily and closed the locket, putting it around her neck once again. “Three seeds of grain to start the grasses of the earth, three seeds of the vine which will bring us fruit and spread up the trellis we build. Three seeds of the fig which will grow tall and become a small tree to bring shade. Three seeds of lettuce which will bring green nourishment to our bodies and three seeds of beets which will root in the ground and give us everything to eat on the plant.”

The boy smiled, imagining the greenery he seemed to have forgotten. “Why did the rain stop coming all the time and the pond go empty?”

“The rain stopped because of the oceans drying from the boom. There was no water to evaporate into the air. The pond went empty because the spring dried up and ran out of water. But it still rains sometimes, like last week when we got some water for our jugs.” She was starting to get concerned. He had been told this many times. Was he just making small talk? Or was he truly forgetting all he had learned?

“Can we dig to find another spring? This is where the ocean was, maybe it is underneath us.”

Mother's eyes sparkled a green glow as she realized this possibility. “We have walked down many hills of the dried ocean and reached this barren flat of waste which we have wandered for months. If we dig and find new springs then certainly the water has been hidden under us all this time!”

“So we dig?”

“We will dig upon our wake!”

They found some rocks and mother started digging a few dozen feet from the boulder. She was on her hands and knees attacking the earth with all of her strength. She told the son to look for fish bones and put them as a pile and they would use this to help the seeds grow fruit. Faith, mother thought time and again as the sweat dripped from her brow. She kept at it all day, without a break to look for food or drink from her water jug. But at the end of the day she had dug out the dust and only reached more dust. There was sand and dirt and clay in small pouches. She set it all in a pile together.

The boy had found thirty fish bones. One was as long as his arms. “There was no water,” he said as the sun set.

“We will dig again tomorrow. Deeper. And you will grind up the bones and put them in our pile of dirt.”

The boy worried, mother looked frantic, her hair was knotted and wild and her thin face red with exertion. She had only taken a small sip from their water, but it looked like she had sweat more than she drank. He worried that his idea would make her crazy like father had gone last year before the walk began. But he was scared to say anything.

The next day the child awoke to frantic panting. He rose and strained his eyes to see through the blinding glares of the sun. It felt humid today. Maybe rain will come, he thought. He took a small sip from the water. It was almost empty. The hole was almost as deep as the child now and mother was in the deeps smacking her rock to break up the earth. But no water was found and nothing was found the next day either. On the fourth day they ran out of drinking water in the morning. They had a raft of scorpions to eat the night before, but today, nothing.

Mother looked worse than ever before. Even worse than when they ran out of food that week when he was little. She was crying, whispering words down to the earth. The son heard her pleading to her father, but he suspected it wasn’t her dad that she was trying to speak with. The hole was as deep as mother now. The pile was massive and four days of ground up bones were mixed within. The son was thirsty, as thirsty as he thought he had ever been. They got some shade from the boulder.

“Mother,” the child spoke. “Come sit in the shade for a moment.”

She sniffled and wiped at her eyes with her forearm. “No, son.” she returned. “I must keep working.”

The son got in the hole with her and picked up a rock. The hard, dry dirt seemed to go as far as the earth. There were orange speckles of clay, mixed in the sand and dirt but no moisture to be seen. “It’s my turn to try.”

“Save your energy child.”

“No, you save yours.”

She was taken back, never had her son said no to her. But it was out of respect for her health that he said so. She knew he was seeing it. Her strength failing, her arms refusing to work, her death approaching. She clambered out of the hole and laid against the boulder. The son started digging.

After some time, the mother’s eyes drifted and she fell into a deep slumber. All the while the boy dug. Faith, he thought. Faith in you. I am a child. I am your child.

Suddenly he felt the earth change. It was no longer hard. It was turning soft, and the tan was going dark. He dug some more and the dirt turned to a muck. His hands were all gooey and sticky so his hands slipped from the rock. But he picked it up and with one final strike, water pushed out from the earth and started to fill the hole. He rushed to the edge and tried to get out, but the sand fell with him and he slipped back into the pool being made beneath. Finally he managed to jump and grab a firm hold of the dry earth above the hole. With the last of his strength he pulled himself up and rolled onto his back. He surprised himself as he began giggling. Laughing in hysterics. He looked over at mother. Her eyes closed. He crawled over to her.

“I’ve got it! The water has come!” he said, laughing.

She didn’t move.

“Mother?”

She lay still for a long moment with the son staring over her. Scared. Then she coughed and sat up. She saw his hands, mucky and moist and smiled the most beautiful smile the child had seen.

“It is time to empty the locket. It is time to sow our seeds, Daniel.”