Still Worth Something

The building was a mangled black silhouette against the romantic violets and vivid pinks of the dawn sky.

Bent at the waist and leaning against another tower, as though it’s death had been so painful that it had looked to it’s neighbour for aid, it had obviously once been a most grand edifice in this now desolate city. Yet now, like all the great structures in this fallen metropolis, it had succumb to time and nature. With parts of it’s skeleton exposed to the elements, it loomed over the town like the bones of some impossible dinosaur, frozen in it’s final moments of extinction; the wind that howled through it’s open wounds, an echo of it’s dying lament.

Yona had seen it several times before, just not up close. When her mother first moved them North after her father was killed, the train had travelled past it and Yona had pointed to the curious wreckage and asked why it leaned.

“They’re hugging.” her mother had replied soothingly. “They must be friends.”

Years later they chose to move South when Junii got sick and wanted to find somewhere comfortable to spend her remaining years with her daughter. They had stopped in a small town for a few weeks rest but soon found it hard to move on. The place was set in rolling valleys of great oaks and sycamores, and the pair had fallen for their surroundings far easier than they’d hoped. In looking for a more permanent residence there they discovered that the devastated city’s skyline could be seen from the steeple of the hilltop church.

“Look Yona,” Junii said, gazing out from the steeple and pointing across the lush hazy green horizon to the crooked shape of the blighted skyscraper in the distance, “They’re still friends.”

Junii failed to get better that summer and the sickness took hold before the seasons even had a chance to change. She passed on just as the trees began to shed, casting their golden-scarlet crowns to the ground as though sharing in her daughter’s mourning.

Yona had only seen twelve winters and was not ready to be alone. The community did what it could for her once her mother was gone, and Yona made do with the bed and the food she received each night, grateful as she was for all of it. She offered what small help she could in return but her frame was too small for strong labour, and though her mind was sharp, she’d received no schooling in all her years up North, so her chores were constrained to the building of fires.

But even as she built and lit and tended to those flames, she felt the cold all the deeper in her bones without the warmth of family around her.

As the auburn carpet of the forest turned hard and frosted over, Yona had found herself less inclined to search for firewood.

A great sullen weight of blackened sorrow sank her heart deeper and deeper into the loveless void in her chest, a great yawning pit that all her hopes had tumbled into since losing her mother. Engaging with the people around her was difficult, and while there were those who reached out offering small doses of solace and mere morsels of connection, there were others still who saw her as a burden; another belly to be filled with fuel only to recoup neither energy nor drive in return.

In her feelings of alienation, Yona had driven herself further into solitude. She had taken instead to spending hours in the town’s modest but brimming library, surrounded on all sides by stacks of books- a labyrinth of tomes filled with words she could neither read nor understand. That small silent depository, pregnant with impenetrable knowledge, was one of the few places she knew of where she could truly spend her time alone. Though at every turn she was reminded of her illiteracy. She knew her alphabet, but when letters were combined into words they were an overwhelming deluge of confusion to her. Each book she looked at was a slow gut punch, compounding her self-loathing, underlining her lack of value to this town, and making her feel evermore worthless.

She had begun to flip despondently through the pages of books at random, perhaps in some feeble hope they might magically bleed into her brain as she scanned through the endless lines of indecipherable shapes. The pictures held her interest, and the comforting musty smell seemed to linger on her clothes, like a gentle hug reminding her of her safe space. She did also recognise numbers from the corners of pages. Though she’d only ever learned to count out loud, she knew how to count into the hundreds, and when she first saw ‘1000’ written down she made the logical leap of naming it ‘Ten Hundred’.

She realised it didn’t matter if the name was wrong- she knew how to do something.

Somewhere deep in her inner emptiness, a small well of pride filled that day; her heart now kept marginally buoyant in those still shallow waters of newly recovered self-esteem.

During one of her deep explorations of the library, she unearthed a small black notebook tucked away beneath an avalanche of leather-bound hardbacks. Unlike all the other books, this one was not printed. Instead, it was filled with a curious font she’d never witnessed before. Smooth and flowing, joined together like a chain of children holding hands. Each letter of a word holding the hand of the next in line.

“They must be friends.” Yona said aloud, her breath wavering as the memories of her mother welled in her eyes. It was the first joyful feeling she’d had while thinking about her mother for several weeks.

She took a shine to the book and looked through it daily. It was filled with scribbled notes and drawings, none of which she truly understood, but all of which she adored and pored over again and again. She’d realised of course that it had all been done by hand, and knowing this seemed to take the intimidation out of the words. The solid blocky print of the other books seemed so cold, but this book breathed with life. The drawings alone were a delight to behold: sketches of strange boxes and doors with circular shapes in the center, small maps filled with arrows and labelled with nonsense names. On the last few pages there was a drawing of some tall buildings with words and digits scrawled next to them. She’d memorised the numbers almost instantly.

Ten Hundred and Eighty Seven. Twenty Five followed by a small ‘t’ and ‘h’. Forty Seven dash Thirty Eight dash Ninety One. Then, underneath them all, some impossible number that Yona couldn’t even conceive of. A number Five, followed by five Zeros. She couldn’t comprehend a number that big! Fascinating.

The notebook was now her one reason to return to the library, squeezing what joy she could from it over and over, making sure to squirrel it away someplace secret just in case anyone ever went looking through the library. She couldn’t risk losing this one sliver of happiness.

Then, on a bitterly chill evening, she returned with what scant amounts of tinder she had managed to scrounge together, after spending her day captivated by her notebook. Passing by a doorway, she overheard the community leaders all gathered together, arguing aloud.

Arguing about her.

“She’s too lazy!” yelled one. “She’s no use!” came another. Several argued for forcing her to improve in her labours or else enforcing her expulsion. One person, a strict older woman named Magane, whom had never looked Yona’s way with anything less than a grim accusatory stare, pointed out that if the girl couldn’t do her job then they’d have to start burning the books from the library.

The smattering of firewood fell from her arms as Yona, heart beating like a foreboding drum, fled back to the library, her veins flooded with panic. Wresting the notebook from it’s hiding place, she took off into the evening and into the woods.

Hours of running and weeping passed, and in the blindness of her sorrow she had found her way to the ruined city. In the imposing shadows of the buildings, she wandered the streets, the hollow torn carcasses of shops and homes lining the avenues. Looking at the street signs, she suddenly recognised the shapes of the words. Flipping through her notebook she saw them labelled upon the lines of the maps. What could this mean?

She followed the arrows marked in the diagrams and arrived at the base of the great dinosaur; the embracing buildings she had only previously seen from afar.

Above it’s entrance was a number she knew. 1087. She felt a compulsion she couldn’t explain and ventured through it’s threshold. Inside there was a numbered list that seemed to show what was located on each level, all the way to the 40th floor. Though she’d no idea what lay in wait for her, she entered the staircase and resolutely headed to floor 25. The climb yielded terrifying results. Rubble and devastation were abound in equal measure, with most of the walls and windows completely gone, the kindly load-bearing neighbour visible through the gaps.

The entire floor was devastated, walls and doors knocked through. In an area peppered with the remnants of a bedroom, a huge metal door hung loose from it’s hinges. An odd circular dial at the centre; a loop of notched numbers around the dial’s rim.

Yona squeezed inside through the gap, finding piles of clothes and dozens and dozens of small suitcases scattered around and heaped atop each other. Thinking these discarded clothes were a great solution to the cold, she slipped some on then grabbed a suitcase, unzipping it so she might fill it up with clothes for the townsfolk.

But the suitcase was already full.

Hundreds of small faded-green pages, each one covered with writing and intricate drawings. In each of the four corners- a large number one. On one side of the paper- a stern looking old lady with cropped white curly hair. Yona had no idea who that was. Maybe these all belonged to her?

They were bundled together and bound with labels bearing the number 100 upon them. Yona counted the bundles. Two hundred bundles in just that one case. That’s Two Hundred Hundred! She checked through some of the other luggage: all the same.

Bundling the warmest clothes she could find into the suitcase she’d just emptied, then grabbing another full one, she made her way back down the stairs, through the streets, and back towards her home town.

When she arrived there in the dawn’s early light, the people rejoiced. They had looked for her throughout the night until it had become too cold, then huddled round their fire and planned for the next day’s search. None were expecting her to waltz in wearing a fur coat and dragging wheeled baggage behind her.

As she dispersed jackets and sweaters to the shivering townsfolk, she told them of the stronghold of clothes and paper she had discovered. Some of the older residents recognised the green sheets as items called ‘money’. They told of the times before the cataclysm: how it had been exchanged for goods and labour, but it held no value now.

Yona disagreed.

She took a few bundles from the case, broke their labels off, and screwed them up into loose balls. Walking over to the fire, she tossed them into it’s base. Catching alight, the flames grew higher, igniting the wood above. The crackling fire was met with a roar of applause.

The people all celebrated that day. For the bounty that would see them through the winter. For the daughter finally accepted into their fold. And most importantly- Yona found her worth, and the true warmth she sought within the tribe.

They hugged and leaned on one another, holding hands.

They must be friends.