Bad Seed

It took time for Amos to fully accustom his senses to the underground, but the journey into the Darkzone was long and time was on his side. The river roared; its sound amplified in the confined space of the tunnel. Earthy scents filled the air and sat heavy in his nostrils. The light of his red lantern disoriented and irritated him, however, as he travelled ever deeper his eyesight sharpened and he remembered once more how to tolerate this dark environment.

The long road to the mountain’s core stretched on, hour after hour, though it seemed easy compared to the rocky trails of the last few days. The passage of feet and cartwheels had polished the limestone floor smooth. His wagon glided on the flat, even path, each step taking him closer to home.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, a checkpoint materialised at the end of the river tunnel. Two guards in black uniforms sat around a fire barrel, watching the entrance to the next chamber. Amos called out to the pair and upset the dogs sleeping at their feet. The animals jumped to attention and voiced their surprise in deep, throaty barks.

The guards stood. “Parker, Hammer, shut up!”

One swept his torch over Amos’ property. The other held out his hand.

“Permit.”

Amos pulled the parchment from his jacket and handed it over for inspection. “The Keeper’s seal marks the top right corner,” Amos said, “as is proper, and her signature is at the bottom.”

The guard frowned at him. “We’ll tell you when everything’s proper.”

Amos held in his sigh. He always had trouble with this checkpoint, which lingered on the edge of the settlement and saw very little action. Even the guards at the main cave entrance never bothered him as much as these ones did. The surface guards barely batted an eyelid when he appeared on the road outside the barricade. They simply raised the gate when he called out and let him through without hassle. These guards insisted on checking his permit repeatedly, their eyes pretending to read, usually until he lost his temper.

Suddenly, the dog barked again, its attention fixed on something in the water. Pippa shied and knocked the second guard inspecting Amos’ saddle bag.

“Get your animal under control, Junker.”

Amos held the lead tight. “Come on, fellas,” he said, when Pippa had calmed. “We do this every time. You know who I am. It’s been a long journey. I just want to get home.”

The guard grunted and shoved the parchment back into his chest. “Go.”

“Thank you,” Amos said. He clicked his tongue. “Come on, girl.”

One the other side of the checkpoint, the tunnel ended. The passage around him opened into an immense underground chamber, containing a deep subterranean lake. Amos breathed in the smell of minerals and soggy moss.

He was almost home.

To his left, a rocky beach arced like a fat crescent moon around the lake. The Night Port claimed the top half of this curve, its soft glow breaking the cave’s eternal night. Torches and electric spotlights lined the jetties and voices bounced across the water. People moved about the port, their bodies shadowy and insubstantial. A thin film of smoke from numerous fire drums—almost too hard to see at this distance—gave the air above the port a hazy quality. It lingered against the high vaulted ceiling and disappeared through shafts in the stone.

Pippa gave an impatient tug on the lead.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”

Amos skirted the lake. Pippa quickened her pace, but he reined her in lest she injure a leg on the uneven ground. An old cargo boat separated from the darkness ahead. He closed in on this beached giant. Soon dozens of barges surrounded him and blocked the Night Port’s light. His lantern washed the hulls and exposed decks red. Amos steered the mare through this narrow maze of rusted tin and soaked wood.

“What a waste,” he told the mare. “The Guards should have let me salvage what I could, stubborn sods. Now it’s all ruined.”

Deep into this metal graveyard, they passed an old passenger barge—its name, New Beginning, still visible on the hull. Memories surfaced at the familiar sight, taking him back to his arrival, decades ago.

There had been no celebrations, the morning Amos had left the surface world behind and journeyed into darkness. He’d stood on the New Beginning’s upper deck amongst dozens of silent, sombre passengers, as it had travelled the underground river, heading deep into the mountain. The passageway had seemed to go on forever until suddenly they were crossing the lake.

The Night Port had taken up the entire beach back then and had been swollen with supplies and “invitees” waiting for their turn to travel to Haven. Dozens of barges had moved in and out of the dock. They had crowded the lake and filled the air with smoke and the scent of gasoline. Amos had felt apprehension and excitement as he’d stepped from the ferry onto the pier, one arm clutching his tool bag, the other gripping his sister, Helena’s, elbow so he wouldn’t lose her in the crush.

Helena’s eyes had been so wide the whites dwarfed the pale green of her irises. She’d kept twisting her head, taking in the expanse of dark water, and had clutched her own bag so tight she broke the handle.

The noise of men and machinery had assaulted their ears. People had clogged the jetties, their belongings clasped against their chests. Confusion had reigned. There hadn’t been time for Amos to see to his precious freight—a clock for Haven city, carefully stored in the New Beginning’s cargo bay. Those behind had pushed against his back until he’d shuffled forward with the crowd.

On the pier, he’d given their names to a foreman with a clipboard. He’d found his sister a place to sit out of the way of the workers and waited for their turn to travel to Haven city. Amos had kept touching his coat pocket, feeling for his tier 2 invitation and the plus one ticket for his sister. His profession had made him essential to Haven, but without that little piece of paper he was nothing.

In the long hours of waiting that had followed, Amos did his best to keep his mind busy so he wouldn’t have to think about the people he’d left behind on the surface. He’d listened as invitees from lower tiers complained about the wait. One of these men, a cook, said he’d been there for almost a full day. Amos had watched workers stacking supplies and materials in neat piles against the cave wall, and the foremen in wine red uniforms who seemed to be everywhere at once, their careful attention preventing the Night Port’s fragile system from tipping into chaos.

After four hours, they’d finally called his name and directed him to the ferry that would take him and his sister to their new life in Haven. Helena’s white hand had tugged on his as they approached the pier.

“Amos, do you feel guilty about mother and father?”

“Of course I do.”

“We left them to die.”

Helena’s words had cut through all the justifications and excuses he’d built around his decision. The fact was, they had left their parents to an unknown fate. Still, he’d tried to defend the indefensible, the unforgivable. “I would have brought them if I could.”

Helena hadn’t seemed to hear him, as if she too was lost in the painful truth of her statement. “The worst part is they don’t even know what we’ve done to them. They sent us off with well wishes and smiles on their faces and we looked right at them and smiled back, never uttering a word to warn them. I keep imagining their hurt when they find out we abandoned them. How do I forgive myself for keeping this secret and for feeling glad I have a chance to live?”

Amos had felt so tired in that moment. “I don’t know, Helena.”

His sister’s green eyes, normally bright and merry, had filled with a deep shame. “It’s worth it, isn’t it, Amos? Because we’re safe. They’d want us to be one of the lucky ones, right? That’s how parents think, right?”

A sharp cry from across the lake brought Amos back to the present. He banished the memories before he could dwell on the answer to his sister’s question, or the change in their relationship from allies to enemies.

He steered Pippa through the forgotten vessels, past a fresh image painted on the side of a tilted hull, a human figure slashed with a great red smear. It was a sign for the Smokers, not him, a warning against trespassing. It was one of many littering this abandoned part of the port, forbidding the inhabitants of the Darkzone from fishing or making camp amongst the ruins.

The punishment for disobedience was severe, but Amos knew most Smokers ignored the warnings and took the risk. Need compelled them to sneak into this metal graveyard and search for anything of value. Hunger drove them to take their chances stealing fish from beneath the Guards’ noses.

Amos left the abandoned port and guided Pippa towards the cave wall, a dark rock face pitted with shallow scars and riddled with tunnels. There was only one entrance big enough for his wagon. The ceiling sloped and the wagon top made it through with only centimetres to spare. The lake smell faded as rock enclosed them.

He travelled through various cave pockets and navigated the thick columns of stone blocking the road, until he saw a stationary yellow lantern in the distance. His niece sat within the light, her slight form casting a long black shadow on the flowstone behind her. In one of her many odd rituals, Elsa had drawn an intricately patterned circle around herself. The shapes and lines had hidden meanings she’d never shared, not even with him.

Amos drew closer and he noticed Elsa cupped a pocket watch in her hand. One slender finger traced the artisanal mark and the neatly etched inscription at the back. Amos recognised the watch, though he was surprised to see it here. He’d assumed Helena had thrown it away long ago, but maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised that Elsa had it now. His niece had a habit of sniffing out precious things and squirreling them away.

“I gave that watch to your mother on her wedding day.”

Elsa was deep in thought. She seized her knife and jumped to her feet.

“A little late for action.” Amos led Pippa forward. “Daydreamers don’t last long in the Darkzone.”

Elsa’s features relaxed into a rare smile. “You’re back!”

The watch disappeared beneath her shirt and the knife into the sheath on her belt. Elsa raced forward. She gave him a quick hug and scrunched her nose at the smell on his clothes.

“I can’t say I’m happy to see you here,” Amos said.

Elsa ignored him and turned to the caramel mare. “Pippa, you look exhausted.”

“I’m serious.” Amos tapped on Elsa’s shoulder to regain her attention. “You could have waited just as easily from the safety of the Chimney. Plus, you’d get the scalding of your life from your mother if she found out you were wasting lantern oil.”

“I can handle my mother.”

He laughed as if she’d made a joke, because no one could handle Helena. Elsa extinguished her lantern and stored it in the wagon. Amos blinked as his eyes readjusted to the red light.

“And what about Smokers with nothing to lose? Are you going to handle them too?”

“Of course I will.” Elsa took the mare’s lead. “Just as you taught me. Anyway, I only come for a little time each day and I sat in the dark most of the time, as quiet and dull as a frightened glow worm.”

Amos knew his niece was lying. The dark terrified her. There was no way she could sit here without a light.

She clicked her tongue and marched Pippa forward. Amos walked next to her, holding his red lantern high, so she could plan her route along the road.

“I was worried,” Elsa said. “You were really late this time.”

“Nothing I could do about it,” Amos said, his voice gruffer than he intended.

“Was there trouble?” Elsa lifted her eyes from the path.

The wagon jolted on a stray rock.

“Watch where you’re walking her,” Amos said. “She’s a horse, not a wheelbarrow.”

Elsa gave Pippa an apologetic pat and urged her on again. “So? What happened?”

Amos went through the encounter in his mind and decided he couldn’t bring himself to tell her anything now. “Nothing that can’t wait until we’re back at the workshop.”

She gave him a quick look of concern.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said. “Let’s just say it delayed me enough I got caught in a dry storm. One of the worst I’ve seen. There was enough electricity in the air to make the hair on your arms crackle, and the wind was strong enough to blow a slight thing like you away.”

They walked together in comfortable silence until a tin shed painted with a large red cross came into view.

“You’d better hide, Elsa. Checkpoint’s coming up.”

Elsa handed him the lead and ducked behind Pippa. Amos hobbled to the other side, ready to pull out his permit.

“Coming up behind you!” Amos called.

A guard stuck his head out through the door and surveyed the passageway. He recognised Amos and his wagon and, unlike the earlier guards, waved him through without a fuss.

They entered the Alley, so familiar with its smells of old fish and sweat. It was in-between shifts. The shop shutters were down and few people were about. A group of tired stone carvers crossed their path on their way back from a job, their makeshift tools arrayed on their belts and their skin and hair coated in fine yellow dust.

One of the men dipped his head. “Welcome back, Master Junker.”

Amos rewarded his politeness with a nod, though he was no Master. To have such a title, a man needed to belong to one of Haven’s five Guilds and have dozens of apprentices to his name. Amos might be a Citizen, but he lived in a hollow like everyone else in the Darkzone, and he only had Elsa to help with his junking business.

Amos turned off the Alley and into Junker Lane. At the end of the passage, he took a deep breath. Hidden drafts circulated in this stone courtyard, removing the smoke and stale air.

“Are you going to help?” Elsa asked, unhitching Pippa from the wagon.

Amos hobbled to the other side and with her assistance, lowered the shafts to the ground. He removed the carry bag from Pippa’s back and loosened random buckles and ropes. Elsa followed his movements.

“You’re limping again.”

“You should have your eyes on the mare, not me.” Amos pointed to Pippa who was edging towards the clear blue pool. “I don’t feel like facing Rama’s wrath for dirtying her drinking water.”

Elsa grabbed Pippa’s bridle and pulled the old mare’s head away.

“Use the bucket,” he ordered.

“I know, I know.”

His niece filled the metal container to the brim. When Pippa had drunk her fill, Elsa took the brass key from around her neck and passed it to him.

“The lock’s started sticking.”

“Well, you know what to do.” Amos slipped the key into the padlock and jiggled it until it turned. “You don’t need me to tell you.”

With a click the shackle separated from the padlock body. Amos removed the chain holding the steel doors shut.

“I thought we could replace it with one of the new ones.”

“And waste a perfectly workable padlock?” He opened both doors wide. “You’re not thinking like a Junker, girl. Nothing’s ruined until it’s falling apart in your hands, and even then it has value as spare bits and pieces.”

His niece waved away his well-known lecture and guided Pippa into the stall just inside the door. She lit a lantern, giving the stable a warm glow, and led the horse to her feedbag.

“Here you go, my beauty.”

“Any other news?” Amos asked, limping to the mare’s side to remove her harness.

Elsa retrieved the hard brush from a shelf nearby and started to brush the dirt from the mare’s shaggy coat.

“The price of animal feed’s gone up again.”

“Already?”

He felt the weight on his shoulders grow heavier. If horse feed had risen, it was only a matter of time before the kenafi stalks they used to blanket the stall went up too. Amos felt another pang of anger at the stolen junk and the loss of profits.

“It’s no use,” Elsa said, attacking a fat clump of dried mud on the mare’s hind leg. “She needs a wash.”

Amos patted Pippa’s bony rump. “Good idea. You see to washing the mare and I’ll see to shaving this scraggly beard.”

He shuffled down the passageway to his workshop.

“What about the wagon?” Elsa called out. “Don’t you want to unload it?”

“Leave the wagon,” Amos called back, still not ready to tell her the truth. “We’ll get it later.”