Filaria - Brent Hayward [39]
Aside from the occasional, muttered complaint about the hardness of the benches or about the heat in the covered cart, the girls and their mother progressed throughout the late morning and into the early afternoon in a dazed sort of torpor. The rumbling and shaking, the transmission’s roar, the intense heat and stale smell of the cart, all seemed to lull the family like a soporific. The girls rocked from side to side, side to side, side to side —
Though Deidre and her family had moved into Elegia only a few years ago, when Deidre was eight, she could not recall what it was like to live elsewhere, beyond the boundaries of the estate. The roadside landscape they passed was lush and vibrant, the small towns that fell behind active, alive, and boisterous; Deidre realized she had expected both people and surroundings out here to be forlorn.
Occasional pedestrians, going about their business, carried food or water or strolled the edges of the road in small groups. Most paid the cart little heed, glancing at it with mild curiosity as it rumbled by. Several children chased behind for a short while, and a group of unseen animals commented loudly and catcalled rudely from the ditch.
Once, they had to pull over to let pass a tiny old crone sitting atop a massive wagon that was being drawn by a beast Deidre had never seen before, a creature twice as high as a man with long shaggy fur and great fleshy feet. The face, when it turned to look Deidre’s way, was vaguely human, but in a most grotesque fashion. The creature emanated a blast of pathos toward her like a gust of cold air.
At last it was teatime. Bidding the request of the girls’ mother, Lady took the cart off the road and stopped it under the shade of a great willow tree. A brook ran under an arched culvert.
The servant jumped from the bench and busied herself setting out a blanket. Emerging, one by one, blinking, the four girls stretched and looked about the glade, tense, lean, healthy.
Deidre’s mother unpacked sweet rolls and sandwiches and tiny sausages. It was much cooler here, under the willow. Water from the brook was refreshing. The suns were dimming. Overcast conditions prevailed. Filling her cup for a second time, Deidre searched the pebbled bottom for caddis fly larvae or diving beetles, or perhaps a minnow, but the ecosystem out here had no place for these creatures and the stream was sterile; the local supervisor had not, apparently, seen fit to stock the water with anything from its archives.
Seated on the blanket, Voluminia and Estelle ate their lunch, talking hoarsely, laughing, hitting one another. A fair distance from them, Miranda gazed at the grass poking up between her knobby knees and did not eat or even pay the food the slightest attention. On the bench of the market cart, Lady munched noisily and messily, staring out over the fields. Thusly, a modicum of equilibrium — despite the adventure — had returned to Deidre’s life. Mother buttered a slice of bread. Talked to Miranda. Trying to get her to eat, no doubt.
A sudden stab of regret at how she had treated her father, when the family had left Elegia, stung Deidre. She vowed to herself that she’d apologize when she next laid eyes on him — for he would come to the cabin, surely, as he had promised. They would all be reunited soon. She smiled, and sipped the clean water.
How quickly hardships could be smoothed out, how adaptable we are —
Beyond the willow, soaring, several shapes rode currents so high they appeared to touch the scaffolding that lined the sky and from which the suns hung. Deidre stared for a while but could not imagine what these were. Machines? Or real birds brought to life? Lab-born creations?
Approaching the blanket, she continued to idly watch these forms, deciding at last that they were creatures.
But, as the beasts soared closer, their shapes were clearly bigger than she had at