Aly Markland

I wrote this story for submission to a short fiction anthology with the theme ‘New beginnings’. Length: ~4,000 words Previously published as Aly van Limbergen

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When the power went out, I learned just how little it takes for your whole way of life to be turned on its head.

At first, of course, nobody believed it. We thought it was a normal power cut, over in a matter of hours; then, when that didn’t happen, that it’d be days. It was only when the first nomads started coming, and bringing with them the news—no power in Chippenham, Cirencester, Newbury—that we started to understand this was something different. Something serious—since what was there these days that didn’t use electricity?

I stopped going to work. There was nothing to do when our computers didn’t even turn on, and without bank accounts, they weren’t exactly going to pay us. Instead, I became a dishwasher at the communal kitchen we set up inside the local primary school, where people who knew more about cooking than me heated tins of beans and sausages and anything that hadn’t already gone off over camping stoves, and we tried not to think about what would happen when the gas ran out. The Army had come through and taken all the petrol in the first week, but we hadn’t seen anyone official-looking since. For all we knew, we were on our own.

Our town’s neighbourhoods split themselves into a dozen villages, each electing a mayor. My housemates collected firewood; my next-door neighbour baked bread. People came and went, news trickled in—no power in Bristol, Reading, Oxford. I tried not to think about what would happen when winter came.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my parents, two hundred miles away and with no way to reach them but my own two feet. I reckoned I could walk it in a week, if I walked all day. There were more nomads every day, some of them must be going north. I could join them: go village to village, work for a meal and a floor to sleep on before moving on. There must be someone here who had a spare tent or sleeping bag they weren’t gonna use. At least then I’d be home for Christmas.

I didn’t mind the washing-up. My arms ached something brutal by the end of shift, but it was jolly, the half-dozen of us—Joe from the chippie, Safiya from my old work, an assortment of neighbours. We weren’t friends by any means—we barely knew each other—but we had camaraderie. It certainly beat answering emails all day.

And there was never a dull moment. In the space of one morning, I heard that the electricity was going to take anywhere from two months to two years to fix, depending on who you asked; that a man on Cawston Terrace had managed to get a letter from Wroughton by carrier pigeon; and that the government were gonna bring back rationing. Not that you could believe anything you heard in the kitchen, of course. It was weird to think that I missed the news.

I was finishing my usual weird lunch—baked beans with frankfurters and mixed vegetables from a can, fresh bread with marmalade, and weak instant coffee—when the the surrounding chatter changed. A party, I heard, passed across tables and over the serving hatch and down the line of dishwashers, growing stronger by the murmur. A party tonight, on the full moon, in the Triangle at sundown.

I didn’t entirely believe it until we heard the first noises—raised voices, the clattering of wood—and stepped outside to see half a dozen people building a bonfire in the middle of the junction. We hadn’t had anything like it before; wood, like everything else that kept us alive, was precious—but the sight of Mr Langley, our makeshift mayor, supervising the lifting of planks and old chair legs into place with his hands on his hips, made my heart lift with anticipation.

As the sun set, my housemates and I brought mugs and dining chairs down from the house along with what was left of our alcohol stash: Baileys, raspberry vodka, half a bottle of JD. Left over after every house party, now the best we had to offer—and as I placed the bottles one by one onto the drinks table, it felt like an offering. To what, I don’t know—maybe to all of us, to our stubborn, human hope.

Once we were seated, Mr Langley stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled, the sound slicing through the hubbub.

“Alright everyone. No official news yet.” He held up his hand against the disgruntled murmurs that followed. “The moment I hear anything from the police or the government, you’ll hear it from me. But until that time, we’ve got to keep our own house in order. We’ve got a citywide mayoral meeting on Tuesday, and I’ll be here at sunset to update you on our winter measures; and I’d like to remind you all that anyone who’s newly-arrived or who’s leaving us needs to come by my office—that’s in the building right behind me—to register. It’s purely to keep track of numbers, so that we can monitor the food situation and find you somewhere to sleep, if you’re staying. Alright. That’s enough from me—so now, drink and be merry!”

There was a swell of applause, even a few whoops and hollers as four people stepped up to the corners of the still-dormant bonfire and crouched low to strike precious matches, sticking their arms into its guts until the kindling caught, and we saw the first bright flames.

It was wonderful. It felt like for the first time since the power went out, everyone was just putting their worries aside and celebrating—I wasn’t sure it mattered what. That we were surviving.

I drank too-warm white wine, and when that ran out, rum and coke. There were even snacks, bags of crisps and mixed nuts and packets of biscuits that someone must have been stockpiling for an event like this. One of the nomads broke out a guitar, and more than two dozen of us sang along to Truly, Madly, Deeply as sparks leaped from the bonfire and launched themselves into the brilliant sky. I’d never seen so many stars.

I wondered if it was this dark all around the world right now. If in Manchester, Madrid, Mumbai, people were sitting around fires like ours, looking up at the sky. If they were singing.

As I went back to the drinks table, I was smiling.

I was searching for a bottle with something still in it when I felt someone at my elbow, and looked over to see an unfamiliar woman about my age, with short, faded purple hair that had a good inch of dark roots, and a nose ring. Her eyes were lined in startling dark eyeliner—and I only realised I was staring when she hefted an entire jerry can in her arms and started to pour from it, liquid splashing over the rim of her tin mug. “Quick, give us your mug,” she said, and I slammed it down beside hers just in time. “It’s homebrew. Not great, but what’re you gonna do. I’m Rory.”

“Sam. Welcome to Gorse Hill.”

“Thanks. Wanna come sit with us?”

I hesitated. Normally, I didn’t do well with groups of new people. I was either too shy or too blunt; but I’d had a few drinks, and the firelight was dancing over Rory’s face and licking at the corner of her wide smile, and I found myself saying, “Yeah. Sure.”

I abandoned my chair and followed her over to the nomads. There were a dozen of them sitting on camping mats, with mugs, empty food wrappers, an abandoned pack of cards strewn around them. A few of them were smoking. Guitar Guy was still strumming away.

“Hey,” I said nervously as I sat down. A few of them nodded to me; fortunately, I was saved from having to make small talk by Rory, who asked, “Do you know tarot?”

The cards weren’t playing cards at all, I realised as she gathered them up and started to shuffle fluently. “Pick three. One for the past, one for the present, and one for the future.”

As she fanned the cards out towards me, I hesitated. I didn’t want to offend her, but honestly it sounded like nonsense.

From the way she was grinning at me, she already had my number. “Just give it a try. If you ask me? There’s no better time for learning to believe in things.”

It was the strangest thing anyone had ever said to me, and the most intriguing.

I picked a card.

I turned it over to see a tower standing precipitously on a narrow rock, a flash of lightning striking its spire as a storm raged all around. There were flames erupting from its windows; when I tilted the card towards the bonfire’s light, I saw a figure in mid-air, tumbling towards the depths. I sucked in a breath.

“The Tower.” I startled when Rory put her hand over mine and guided the card down to the mat, her touch warm. “No shit.” She seemed pleased by the macabre image, for a reason I didn’t understand till she explained: “This means a breaking down of the old ways. A disaster that’s a blessing in disguise.” She tapped the falling figure with a chipped black fingernail. “This is all of us. We’re fucked, sure, but we’re free.”

“Sure, if we can manage not to starve.” Irritation flared in my chest. “If we don’t need medical care, or freeze to death this winter.” I couldn’t help thinking about Dad, and whether his medication would run out before the power was back on, and what would happen if it did.

Her expression softened. “No. But we can’t defeat it, or outrun it—God, or Mother Nature, or whatever you want to call it. We have to remember how to work with it.” Before I could decide what I wanted to reply, she nudged the back of my hand with hers. “Pick another card.”

I really wasn’t sure I was enjoying this. But I did it anyway.

My second card showed a man standing in a boat, pushing away from the shore with an upright pole. There was a figure sitting in the boat, beside some more poles I couldn’t make sense of in the low light until Rory said, “The Six of Swords. Going somewhere?”

My mouth fell open.

“This is the classic traveller’s card.” She relished in my shock like a performer enthralling a crowd. “Could be a metaphorical journey, of course—or you fancy a crack at the nomad life.”

“Yeah. I—I’m going back to my parents’. Up north.”

I hadn’t really believed it until I heard myself say it.

“The journey’ll be tough, but it’ll be worth it. It’ll change you, but for the better.” Before I asked how on earth she could know that, she pushed the fanned-out cards towards me again. “One more.”

The third card I pulled showed a naked woman, kneeling beside a stream. She was pouring water out of two pitchers, beneath a sky full of stars; as I frowned, not understanding, Rory said, “The Star. You wanna know why she’s naked? It’s cause she’s stripped herself of all the bullshit. She’s learning who she is and what she’s gotta do.” She looked straight at me, her dark eyes piercing. “What do you gotta do, Sam?”

Before I could answer, the sky exploded into light.

A hundred of us gasped as one as we watched it spread across the night sky, shimmering green as summer grass, pinks and blues flickering at its edges, lighting up the Triangle and the buildings around it and our hundred shocked faces. It looked exactly like it had the night the power went out—except this time, knowing what destruction it could wreak, I found it just as fearsome as beautiful.

When I looked at Rory, the light was reflected in her eyes.

“The Earth’s waking up,” she said—and before I could reply, “It’s a long time since I’ve seen the north.”

*

I’d assumed she was joking. But Rory was completely in earnest: she intended to come with me—and since I wasn’t exactly going to turn her down, we met the next morning down at the market, to get me a sleeping bag and camping mat, an extra sweater, and the best pair of walking boots we could. In trade, I gave away practically everything else I owned, since everything I wanted to take with me, I’d have to carry.

The person I was two months ago wouldn’t have recognised myself, agreeing to walk hundreds of miles across the countryside with just the contents of my backpack and a companion I barely knew—but the person I was two months ago also wouldn’t have imagined being able to live without my phone and Netflix and an office job, so I figured that her opinions weren’t really relevant.

Deep down, I was excited. Nervous too, of course, but Rory’s cheerful competence reassured me that at least I wasn’t gonna get lost and starve to death out in the countryside. She had a large, well-creased Ordnance Survey map with a line drawn on it in blue ink, starting at the tip of Cornwall and fanning out into a star somewhere to the south; when I looked at her curiously, she explained, “That’s where I’ve been. I saw Stonehenge.”

“What was that like?” I thought I’d seen it once, from the window of a coach, but I wasn’t even sure.

“It was the equinox, so it was rammed. I thought about dancing naked beneath the full moon, but it was too bloody cold.”

I couldn’t figure out if she was joking or not, but I laughed anyway.

I celebrated my last evening in Gorse Hill with my housemates and a handful of friends. No alcohol, because we’d already blown through everything that was left, but Adam from down the street donated a bottle of Ribena he’d been hanging onto. They were all perfectly nice people, but honestly I knew I wouldn’t miss them.

It was my housemate Elise who asked what no doubt everyone else was thinking: “Aren’t you worried she’s gonna steal all your stuff and leave you in a ditch somewhere?”

“I’ve got nothing worth stealing,” I replied—joking to hide the fact that I’d spent the day asking myself why I wasn’t worried about that exact thing. “Seriously, though—she seems really nice, and she’s going north as well, and there’ll be other people on the road with us…and I’ve gotta get home to my parents somehow, so.”

I regretted it the moment I said it—it brought the mood right down. I was relieved when Adam changed the subject, and I stayed pretty quiet after that, just listening to them talk about next weekend’s football match against Covington and Mrs Randall’s attempted village choir leadership coup until there was no more light to see by.

Once our guests had left, I said goodnight to my housemates and went up to bed, snuggling under my duvet as the light of the moon seeped through my thin curtains, thinking that tomorrow, I’d be sleeping under the stars instead.

The next thing I knew, it was dawn.

I threw the last things in my bag and hurried downstairs, debating waking up my housemates to say goodbye for about two seconds before just leaving my house keys on the kitchen table, a hastily-scribbled note beneath. The morning air was crisp as I walked down the road to the Triangle, fallen leaves crunching underfoot.

Rory was already waiting for me outside the mayor’s office.

“I’ve already said my goodbyes.” She clapped me on the shoulder. “Go get ‘em, champ.”

The only person at their post this early was Mrs Marshall. She took my name and address, wished me luck, and slid me a bag of provisions from under the counter that apparently we were starting to keep on hand for people like me. I wished there was something I could give her in return.

As I stepped back outside, the wind whipped up and a swirl of golden leaves danced across the triangle as Rory, her hands shoved in her pockets, asked, “Ready?”

“Ready,” I replied, and gave her my brightest smile.

We set off to the north, through Penhill and across the dual carriageway, until about an hour in, we hit the countryside. The sun was gently warm against our backs, and though it might have been easier and safer to follow a main road, Rory assured me that the spindly single-lane country road she’d led me onto instead was ‘quicker’—and since it was a gorgeous day and she was in charge of the map, I didn’t exactly feel like arguing.

As we walked, I asked, remembering the blue line on her map, “So, where are you from? Cornwall, or—?”

“I’m from all over.” When I looked at her questioningly, she added, “I’ve moved around all my life. When you’ve lived everywhere, you’re not really ‘from’ anywhere in particular.”

“Where have you lived, then?”

“Recently? St. Michael’s. Glastonbury. Gorse Hill.”

Nothing I didn’t already know from looking at her map; too slowly, I realised she was being evasive.

“Alright—what did you do, then? Before all of this?”

“You want the truth?”

“What?” My laugh was baffled. “Of course I want the truth.”

I wasn’t suspicious, exactly, but I wondered why it mattered so much, when none of us were the same people we had been.

“Alright. Well, I’ve been asleep, for a very, very long time. Much longer than you’ve been alive.” She raised her eyebrows, challenging. Daring me to believe her. “The light woke me up.”

“The aurora.” Rory, I realised. “That’s your name. Rory—it’s short for Aurora.”

She smiled like she was proud of me for figuring it out. “That’s one of them. I’ve been called a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

“On these shores? Brighid. Ceridwen. Aurora. Ēostre. No-one’s called me much of anything in a while, but Aurora seems to be making a comeback. You hear your name a lot, you start to sit up and pay attention.”

I didn’t know if I believed her. But a month ago, I wouldn’t have believed any of this.

I asked: “Who are you?”

“The daughter of Mother Earth. The bringer of dawn, the herald of starting over. Patron saint of getting your shit together. If that’s too woo-woo for you, then you can look at it this way: I help people get where they need to go. Show them which way the current’s flowing.”

“So you’re what? A goddess?”

“Sure.”

You’re annoying, I thought, but there was no heat in it. “Why me?”

She shrugged. “Why not you?”

We kept walking.

“So if you’re so old. What have you seen?”

“Oh, same old,” she said airily; I rolled my eyes, no longer caring if she caught it. “Anger. Grief. Despair. Joy. Love. All the greatest hits. I’m just sorry I missed out on television.”

I sighed. “You’re not gonna tell me anything useful, are you?” I couldn’t stop the frustration from bleeding into my tone.

“I’ll tell you how to find the nearest river. I’ll show you which mushrooms taste good and which ones will kill you in ten minutes, and how to tell when there’s a storm coming.” For the first time since I’d met her, she was entirely serious. “Everything else, you already know.”

I wasn’t so sure I agreed.

Instead, I asked, “If you’re a—goddess, why do you look like that?”

She grinned. “I’m the zeitgeist, baby! Would you prefer me in long white robes? ‘Cause personally, I’d rather have thermal underwear and a good pair of walking boots.”

I laughed, and decided to let it go—for now, at least.

A few miles on, the stubbled wheatfields and gentle hills dotted with sheep gave way to forest, trees towering over us as we stepped beneath their shade. As if by unspoken agreement, we fell silent; I couldn’t explain it, but there was something about the cool stillness of the trees that called for an answering silence in me.

It felt holy, I realised—taking me entirely by surprise, since the sum total of my experience with religion was being bored at end-of-term church services. I couldn’t help thinking that if church had been a little more like this then I might have believed after all.

Hushed, I asked, “What is God? Like—really?”

The look Rory gave me was amused; deliberately lightly, she replied, “God’s what you believe in.” She pointed at a turning off the road ahead, a narrow trail forking deeper into the forest. “There’s a spring down that way. Let’s get a refill.”

I didn’t bother asking how she knew. Maybe I was learning.

There was just enough room on the trail for us to walk side-by-side, the dirt disappearing periodically beneath leaf mulch, bordered by gutters of mud. Over our squelching footsteps, I could hear snatches of birdsong, the wind rustling through the leaves; the air smelled of wet soil and life.

With a passion so intense it scared me, I suddenly wanted nothing more than to walk a path like this forever.

I’d been saying for weeks that none of us would come out of this disaster the way we went in, but I felt like I was finally starting to understand what it really meant.

The spring was a mile or so on, set into a rocky outcrop near the top of a hill steep enough to make my thighs burn from the climb, densely ringed with trees. The way the water burst from the earth and splashed on the rocks as it flowed into a ribbonlike stream, it looked like it belonged in a children’s storybook, not in the middle of Wiltshire.

Rory didn’t get her water bottle out. Instead, she stepped up to the rock, crouched down and held her cupped hands under the water, and took a long drink.

When she looked over at me, her eyes were bright.

“The locals used to worship here. They loved a good spring. Imagine: what you need above all else to survive is water, and the earth just opens up and gives it to you.” Her tone was casual, but there was something much older in her eyes. “Good, innit?”

I nodded. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever drunk straight from a spring before. It felt like the kind of thing I should know.

She stood back, making space for me as I walked up, took off my gloves and drank from my cupped palms just as she had. The water was cool and fresh, and I wondered how many people had stood here and drunk from it just like us, reaching how many years into the past.

I found myself saying, “Nothing really changes, does it?”

“Nope,” Rory replied cheerfully. “Water flows downstream whether you’re with it or not.”

I stood up straight, feeling my back and thighs protest, and stepped away, putting my heavy backpack on the ground to get my water bottle out.

When I turned back, there was a stag standing on top of the overhang, watching us silently.

I looked over at Rory just as her face broke into a brilliant smile. “Well, look who it is.”

The stag’s head tilted slightly to the side, one of its ears swivelling, listening to something beyond my reach, though its gaze was fixed on Rory as she held her hand out and said, “Well, come say hello, then!”

I sucked in a shocked breath as the stag started to pick its way down the slope towards us.

Rory looked over her shoulder and winked.

The stag was beautiful, its crown of antlers half as tall again as its body and twice as wide, the fur of its neck luxuriously thick. It walked up to Rory and nosed curiously at her hand, then let out a soft braying noise and tipped its jaw into her palm, encouraging her to pet it.

It was the most amazing, most unlikely thing I’d ever seen.

“I thought I’d find you here.” She ruffled its fur with an easy familiarity. “I brought a friend with me. Sam? Why don’t you say hello.”

When I held my hand out, I was trembling.

The stag’s nose was wet and velvety. He sniffed my hand curiously; as I flexed my fingers to reach out and stroke his soft-looking fur, his smooth tongue shot out and swiped over them.

When I looked back at Rory, she laughed.

I said, “I—I think I believe you.”

The stag pulled away from my touch, and bent his head to drink from the spring. I watched his pink tongue lap up the water with the feeling that I was seeing something more important than I could ever hope to express.

I whispered to Rory, “What do I do now?”

The stag’s ears twitched.

I wasn’t sure she’d understand what I meant—I barely understood what I meant—but she just reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Babe, you don’t need me to tell you.”

She was right. In my heart, I already knew.