Chapter 21: Streets of Philadelphia
(BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN)
The moon hangs pregnant in the sky above The Farm, illuminating the destruction with an eerie blanket. Blaire walks the silent streets alone, as she has walked other roads for ten long years. These streets now seem as alien to her as those of foreign cities and towns she sought temporary shelter in before. She recognises nothing about this place anymore. It has changed too much to feel familiar or beloved. They pass each other like strangers in the night, her and the landscape.
In the darkness, she feels her physical pain acutely. Each bruise pulses. Every wound throbs. Sadness aches in the marrow of her bones like a deadly untreatable disease. Her heart clenches and unclenches like an angry fist. Memories surround her in a dark cage. Unable to escape, she stumbles alone on the once familiar roads. The whirlpool of pain pulls her deeper into the pit of despair.
She walks toward the park where she used to play. Skeleton steel structures poke at the horizon with gnarled fingers. The swing’s ropes and wooden seats are gone. Grass is black ash that rises and falls under her feet’s caress. Bright paint bubbled under the heat, making pockets of air trapped against the steel structures. In places it is peeling away in large sheets, either hanging on by a thread or already dislodged to rest on the blackened soil. She finds the paved lane leading to the center, where a formal rose garden used to bleed fragrant scents into the summer air.
Red King and Grandma loved to rest here on summer evenings, watching the neighborhood’s children running and playing. On weekends, everyone would picnic on the open grass area, red and blue check tablecloths decorating the cement tables. Sandwiches, meatballs, cold chicken drumsticks and thighs, and potato salad. Mini burgers. Greek salad. Speciality items are unique to certain people. Aunt Martha’s sauerkraut. Uncle Phil’s homemade ginger beer. Aunt Fatima’s curry potato samosas. Uncle Brian’s spring rolls, made with freshly chopped vegetables, served with either soy sauce or wasabi sauce. Grandma’s skewers with bacon wrapped around cherries flamed grilled with her special honey glaze.
Blaire forces herself to stand still. Closing her eyes, she imagined herself back in those happy days. She is about to finish the school semester, and looking forward to sleeping in and staying up late into the night. The sun is warm on her skin. A cheeky wind is tugging at her dress and flirting with her hair. She slips off her sandals, longing to feel the grass beneath her feet. The words of her family and friends rush around her. She turns this way and that, trying to catch everything that is happening. Someone brought balloons, tying it with ribbons to the children’s wrists. In the warm memory, sixteen-year-old Blaire twirls around, catching phrases of conversations from the air.
“…never in my life…”
“…green, I mean, who’d have thought…”
“…makes a mean chili con…”
“…and I said to her…”
“…do that at your age and…”
“…and then it hit me…”
“…invitation already?”
Blaire steps forward, out of the memory. This dark present presses down from all sides, filling her nose with the still lingering aroma of burning wood. She walks across the picnic space with legs that feel heavy and slow to commands. The cold returns to her flesh. Soon she’ll be nothing but stone, nothing but a statue standing in the middle of what used to be a place of happiness.
She turns towards the orchards, forcing her feet to run. She slows down soon, though. Out of breath, she puts her hands on her knees, head down, gasping like a fish out of water. With one hand, she pulls up the pants she wore. Everything is too large for her now. Nothing fits properly. Not her clothes. Not Boris next to her. Not this empty black place. This isn’t home. Not to her. Not anymore.
The bone song plays inside her mind. It is a reminder that there is no angel that will come to greet her. There have never been angels because there is no god. It’s just her and the memories. She and the ghosts of those she loved and continue to love. They are the only ones walking these streets with her, but she finds no comfort in the thought. There is no mercy here.
Tears blur her vision at the state of the orchards. The destruction is devastating. Years of her and Red King’s hard labor to find the variants that thrived in this harsh land. All of it is gone now. The pressure in her head increases as the bone song plays its familiar melody. Suddenly she turns away from the orchards, feet now slapping the road.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She runs towards the warehouse, holding on to the band of her pants this time. The doors are closed, but she knows the combination to the security panel. She punches it in quickly, needing to get away from the empty nothingness around her. The doors slide open with a mechanical scream. She pushes inside as soon as the gap is wide enough.
The place has changed since last she saw it. Before that night, when she heard her bed thumping against the wall. She walks closer, noticing the recent scrape marks on the cement floor. Nancy and Uncle B’s work, then. She didn’t meet them when they arrived. Just went down to the big house that will be hers now and slept in the car until the sound of a persistent owl woke her. She sneaked out, leaving Boris to sleep. He did most of the driving, insisting she needed the rest more. Said she looked like a walking corpse and the sight of her will scare people. She might cause an accident.
The warehouse looks in tip-top shape. If there was damage from the fire before, no evidence remains here. She makes her way to the back, where the office is. The business paperwork was in this office. During the day, a secretary sat at the desk closest to the door, leaving the larger desk for the orchard manager. This used to be Red King. Once he retired, Blaire took over, having learned everything from him. Even though she was only nineteen, nobody even questioned her transition into the position. Neither did they question her decision to ask Grandma Sophie to take over Red King’s throne when he died six years later.
She finds herself in front of the glass sliding door to the office. The face looking back shocks her. The skin looks too large for her, as if she was an alien occupying a human body. The sun had done its damage while she suffered on the post in the Bull’s Compound, too. Plus, not eating or drinking enough. On the trip, Boris tried to get her to eat, but nausea overtook her at the mere smell of food.
When did she get this old? Old and thin? Boris had not been wrong. She looks like a skeleton. Skin and bones, as Catriona said. She opens the door, and her skeleton dispels like mist before the morning sun. The office is different too. New furniture. New carpet. New equipment. She closes the door behind her, letting her eyes travel over the shelves and cupboards, the desks, the ornaments, the pot plants. The smell of burning is completely absent here, overpowered by the smell of new things radiating from everything.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She walks towards the larger desk and sits in the new leather chair. On the desk is a computer, a ceramic pot with a fern, and a photo frame with Red King and Grandma Sophie. Tears rise past her defenses, spilling onto her parched cheeks. She doesn’t wipe them away, nor tries to put up a wall to prevent the dam of tears that have been waiting for release. Without taking her eyes off the photo, she reaches down to open the top drawer of the desk. Her fingers touch the box of tissue in the old familiar place, and she lifts it to the desktop. Uncle B knew where they always were, and that she’d need them when she came.
He didn’t even contemplate that she might never return. He knew she’d need some stability when she came back. That is why the workshop and office are ready for her. It was his way of saying that The Farm is ready for her to continue the work Red King started. The work he taught her to do. The work she should have been doing instead of roaming the world like a foreigner with no place to lay her head. She isn’t an alien. Right now she might not feel as if she belongs on this farm, in this office, in these clothes, or in her own skin, but this is still her home.
She isn’t the girl who took over this office from her grandfather. She isn’t the woman who married Luka, or the mother who birthed a Bird. She isn’t the broken husk who couldn’t cry at the grave of her son, nor the vengeful angel pulling the trigger to paint her world red. She wasn’t the ghost fleeing from one room to another, always looking over her shoulder for danger. Neither was she the angel of wrath that poisoned men and stood by, watching them die the most horrible of death.
She was something else completely. A new version of herself. Blaire 10.5. Upgraded, like this office was. Despite the vision of herself in the window earlier, and the tears still flowing from her tired body, she healed in a way she didn’t understand. Her mind knew this, but her heart still clung to the last strains of the old Blaire, the broken, bleeding woman tied to a pole in enemy territory. The woman filled with anger and pain and a lust for vengeance.
She has slipped into this new skin. This foreign skin. But it is the skin she will occupy now as she steps forward into the new beginning.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The sound rises from inside her.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It is strong.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It rises above the bone song, overpowering the haunting sound.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
She lays her fingers to her wrist, feeling the thumping there. A thunderous waterfall of life. Strong. Healthy. Alive in a way, it hasn’t been for years. Sobs tear from her, and she slips from the chair limply, falling on the new carpet like a bag of bones, staring up at the ceiling. She is skin and bones. Nothing more, nothing less.
Weak like a baby slipping into the world, unable to care for itself. She doesn’t fight, allowing this rebirth. Blaire reborn. Blaire rejuvenated. The Snake slips its old skin. Emerging into the world with a new skin. A skin too large for her. A skin she’ll grow into until it too becomes too small. And she’ll slip that one too. An endless death and rebirth.
She calls out to her power, raising her hands towards the sky as she watches the clouds through the window. She calls out with her spirit for rain, grabbing with her fists in the air above her. Within her something releases, and the clouds burst forth rain. She watches it with surprise. Her tears stop flowing. She wipes at her face. Snot and tears mix in a wet mess. Slowly she rises, reaching for the tissues to clean herself. Then she walks outside, closing the doors behind her.
Outside, she stands in the pouring rain. White streaks against the black sky. She lifts her face to the wet shower, allowing it to wash over her. Without even thinking, she undresses. First the boots that were still splattered with blood from the Valley of Death. Boris tried to clean it away, but she can still feel the remnants of it in the seams, clinging to the threads and the leather. Then she drops the pants that don't fit her. She only needs to wiggle her shoulders for the shirt to slide off her like a cape. She hooks her socks off with toes, her panties with shaking fingers. Then she unties her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders like a veil.
Naked, she stands under the pouring rain. Then she feels the thump-thump-thump of her heart, feels the blood pumping in her veins. She dances to this rhythm, this new song. She dances with the rain washing over her. She dances in the black rivers of ash and water. Her feet move swift and sure over the broken land, through the skeleton park, into the field where the orchard used to flourish. Here she stops, looking down at the black ashes swirling around her feet.
Far in the distance, thunder slaps the earth. She jumps at the sound and then looks up at the sky, waiting for the light. When it arrives, it’s a golden slash of beauty in the darkness. It cuts through the pain, opens the festering wound that is The Farm. And the land bleeds black.
She turns around, dancing in the cleansing rain. Twirling like that child at the picnic, she sees her family in a blur. They are smiling at her now. Smiling at her crazy dance. Smiling at her happiness. Then she stops, swaying with the momentum. She falls backward onto the ground, arms flung outward. She makes an angel in the rain and ash. Beat the pattern into the soil.
Night has fallen, and she is awake. Unlike her nights of insomnia, this is different. Being awake here, under the dark sky with rain pelting her tender flesh, is rejuvenating. The darkness that has been part of her life fades away. The old Blaire, that broken winged being, washes away with the ash, running down the field towards the river.
A face appears before her. Boris. He looks concerned. She smiles at him.
“Where have you been?” he asks. “I’ve been running around these streets looking for you.”
He is still a stranger to her, but somehow also familiar. As if they were born to be here. Fated soulmates. Even their names fit together.
“I’ll never run away from you,” she says. “We belong together.”
He sits down next to her with a lopsided smile. “Are you okay, Blaire?”
She reaches out to take his hand, squeezing. “I’m slipping my skin. It’s a Snake Clan ability. Rebirth for me and rejuvenation for the land.”
“When I woke up and saw you left…”
He turns his face to look at her. She can see the uncertainty swirling in his eyes.
“I’m sorry if that caused you to worry,” she says. “I had some catharsis. But I need it. I’m feeling so much better already.”
“You look the same, but also not.”
She sits up, scooting closer to him. He is a stranger to her still, but the connection between them throbbed like the blood song in her veins. They don’t have a strong bond now. They haven’t faced the world’s troubles together yet. There is no deep love, no foundation of faith, nothing to trust in. But she knows it will grow over time. This rebirth is a new beginning for her, and him, and this place.
She is scarred, like the land. Yet, wounds heal. Blood can wash away. Pain forgotten in the light of new joy. No angels will come down to her. No gods will show mercy. But she can forgive herself in the same way she showed mercy to the Bull Tribe. She can build a new home here. It won’t be the same as the old one, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be good.
She leans closer, kissing his cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Thank you for coming with me. I promise to be a more considerate partner from now on.”
He shrugs and then rises, holding his hand out to her with a curtsey. “May I have this dance?”
Blaire Nathara smiles at the man who accepts her as she is. She takes the offered hand and dances with him across the soggy soil. They dance on and on until the morning breaks above them. They dance until Uncle B’s chuckles call them back to the present. He is standing next to Nancy and a row of smiling strangers, watching them. Boris swings her naked body away from their eyes. Removing his shirt, he helps her dress into the wet mess. They giggle like children caught red-handed.
“I’m tired now,” she whimpers, embracing him.
He lifts her with muscular arms and starts the journey home. The others follow them, whispering and giggling. In front of them, Red King walks hand in hand with Grandma Sophie. Her father and mother walk arm in arm. Catriona is cradling a baby, crooning. The words are unclear, but the melody is familiar. One by one, the rest of the family, friends and neighbors join the strange march.
Blaire lays her head against Boris’s chest, humming Catriona’s lullaby.