Chapter Text
“The suns will rise, but no one promised we would.”
— Line from “Five Moons and a Road,” an ancient traveling song
Just like every other morning before, Meryl awoke alone, before her alarm could ring. The attic air was still cold from the night, and in the dim light of the new day she could see her first breath. On the horizon, the first of the twin suns was just creeping lazily over the edge of the sky. In a few hours, it would once again be as hot as an oven.
Silently, Meryl slipped out of bed and immediately shook out the blanket. The cold air prickled unpleasantly against her bare legs, yet it made her feel alive. Under the roof, the temperature swings were more extreme than in the rest of the house. That was because the roof itself was little more than a covering made of metal sheets, with clay in between to seal the gaps. It was the room in which Meryl had grown up, her old childhood bedroom. The room Eriks now occupied had once belonged to Doctor Sharpe. When she returned five years ago, Meryl had first moved into his former domain — what she usually referred to as her “father’s” space. She lived there comfortably for three years. Every corner and every crack of the house brimmed with old memories in her eyes, but enough time had passed that the pain had lost some of its sting.
Then Eriks had come into her life. She had thought about banishing him to the attic, but given that he was so much taller than she, he would never have been able to stand upright up there—he would have had to walk around stooped all the time. She hadn’t wanted to do that to him. He was already carrying a heavy enough burden; he didn’t need a cramped bedroom forcing him to duck his head eternally.
And so she vacated her quarters without a word, moved back upstairs — so to speak, returning to her roots — and simply told him that the guest room was free. That was all he needed to know, and after everything that had happened, he didn’t ask any specific questions. Meryl was grateful for that.
She readied herself for the day, rummaging through her dresser for a clean blouse and a fresh skirt. “Clothes make the man,” Sharpe had always said, and so she dressed the way one might expect of a doctor: always tidy, maybe a bit conservative. She’d had plenty of opportunities to try the modern trends in the different cities they had visited back when they used to travel. Nowadays she placed more value on the quality and durability of her clothes. Her blouses were all somewhat faded but in clear, cool colors that stood out from the dust and sand of No Man’s Land — and, handily, they could be easily bleached or disinfected.
In the broken mirror on her dresser, Meryl inspected her appearance. She would wash up downstairs in the bathroom, but she never left her room without a quick once-over. What she saw were blue eyes that still looked tired and sleepy without her beloved coffee, and then…she pushed her hair aside to look at her roots, which were pale and almost white in contrast to the rest of her black bob. She would have to color it again sooner rather than later. But first, breakfast called.
She moved to the door, running her fingertips over the notches in the metal — markings Sharpe had etched into the frame to track her growth. There weren’t many. She had stopped growing only three years after arriving in his care. But those slender scars on the doorframe meant the world to her. Touching them with her fingers was like playing her “coffee-tape”: more than a memory. An echo. A silent cry proclaiming that he had been there, that he had existed — or rather that they had existed, their small family: “Look at us, world, we’re here and we’re alive.”
Then, as her fingers had done, she glided down the stairs, taking a large step to avoid the third step from the bottom. It was prone to squeaking in the most pitiful way. She didn’t want to wake Eriks so early, since she knew he didn’t sleep well. His tired eyes told her so every single morning. Besides, she often heard him tossing and turning at night, groaning softly in his sleep. He never spoke about his dreams, but it was obvious they plagued him. When he first became her patient, she had offered him sleeping pills once, but he refused vehemently. Meryl respected that. She trusted that he knew he could ask her if it ever became too much, but he never did.
She checked the radio to make sure the cassette was firmly in place — almost as though she were afraid a Worm had snuck in overnight and tampered with her music — then pressed play and hummed along as she started making coffee.
Today she made omelets for breakfast. More a stopgap than a culinary choice. Yesterday, Wednesday, she’d already served scrambled eggs, and since Tomas were not only large running birds but also laid equally large eggs, she and Eriks often spent several days eating egg-based dishes.
Since a single egg alone wouldn’t be enough to fill them, Meryl once again fetched the wormmeal powder, stirred some of the egg mixture into it in a cup, and began using her hands to shape little strips and rounds—almost like she was baking cookies. Her goal was a dish that at least looked a bit like eggs with bacon at first glance—how it would taste was another matter entirely. Real bacon—her mouth watered at the mere thought—was almost impossible to find unless you wanted to spend a fortune. The few livestock animals kept in town were far too valuable to slaughter, as they provided milk, eggs, and wool. Worm meat was relatively cheap, but people looked down on it, and Meryl had to admit she could hardly force it down unless it was finely ground and unrecognizable for what it actually was.
She fried the eggs and the “bacon pieces” and arranged them on the plates to form smiling faces. As always, she made sure Eriks’s portion was not only bigger but also more nicely arranged. Her own egg-smiley turned out to be a cyclops: she’d run out of “bacon-dough” near the end.
She called out to him. He shuffled in — half awake, hair askew. She set the plates on the table; he sat, and she fixed his hair before they started to eat.
Eriks looked as tired this morning as he did every other day — so much for hoping he’d slept well. Even the grinning omelet only coaxed out a small smirk, and he looked so sad doing it that Meryl’s heart felt heavy. Eriks often smiled but never laughed. It never reached his eyes when his mouth curved upward. It was almost as if he were a ghost in his own life, doing certain things out of habit just because they were expected of him. Meryl would have loved to comfort him, to help him, but she didn’t. He would have let her, and that would have been worse than if he’d rebuffed her.
She forced the thought away — but too late. Its teeth had already sunk into her mind.
Though she could feel the venom enter her, soaking into her skin, it didn’t yet reach her deepest self. She’d have to tend to it later, but not right now. Rather than letting her own fears swallow her, she said, “The water tank’s nearly empty again.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Eriks replied and nodded, glancing up from his breakfast.
“You don’t have to do it alone. If you come straight home after work, we can just go together, all right? Otherwise, I’ll have to set up the dew-catcher, you know?” She teased him. He hated how the device’s slats squeaked when you adjusted them, while she loved the pitter-patter of droplets in the morning — something he usually slept through.
He feigned a horrified grimace and grinned so lightheartedly that, for a moment, she almost believed it. But his eyes remained untouched by that smile.
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The day was even quieter than the day before. Even then, Meryl hadn’t known whether to be thankful that nothing was happening or to complain about the boredom. A strong wind was blowing sand relentlessly in everyone’s face, so she stayed in the treatment room, seated on her “doctor’s stool,” as Sharpe had always called the rolling stool the physician used during examinations. Like everything else in the practice, the stool was old. Unlike most of the rest of the equipment, though, it wasn’t part of the original furnishings: Meryl had only had this squeaky, worn-out rolling stool for four years, ever since a patient had given it to her. It had already been well-used back then, but still functional. It had squeaked with every shift of weight and that wouldn’t be improving anytime soon. For a year now, she could feel a spring starting to press through the seat on the right side, so it wouldn’t be long before her green-cushioned friend gave out completely. Then she’d either need a replacement or — more likely — would just be standing again from then on.
With nothing else to do, she looked out the window, watching the streaky clouds drift by — rare visitors, and even rarer sources of rain. Since Meryl had moved back to Rustwich, it had only rained twice, and one of those times was hardly “rain,” since the moisture evaporated before hitting the ground. She thought of Mr. Harnell and his eye, of how Eriks had visited him again the day before and how happy the old man had been about that. Each time he came to see her, she sensed a little less life in him, as though his time was drawing to a close. But he was still stubborn and alive. She hoped she’d be gone by the time he died.
Her only real patient that day was six-year-old Theodore, brought in by his mother, Iola. The rash he’d had since Monday — and which Meryl had already examined then — hadn’t improved despite the ointment she’d mixed. On the contrary, it had grown worse. He’d even developed a slight fever.
But now, at least, the symptom that had been missing on Monday was showing up. A quick look inside Theo’s mouth, at his almost pink tongue, and Meryl declared in a sober tone, “The ointment couldn’t have worked. This is scarlet fever.”
Iola clapped a hand over her mouth, and Theo — who had heard the words before but didn’t really know what they meant — looked fearfully from his mother to his doctor. Meryl, meanwhile, wore a serious expression. She barely had any Septima antibiotics left, and getting more in time would be tricky. She dug the last three pills from her cupboard and handed them to Iola — who looked on the verge of tears. “Here, they’ll get you through tomorrow evening. By Saturday at the latest, Eriks will bring something else. It’ll be okay.”
Just how she intended to keep that promise depended on getting up to the attic — or more precisely, to the top of her wardrobe up there.
Time crawled onward. The clock in the hall ticked and made a pronounced cracking noise at the passing of each hour. Meryl hadn’t been able to afford a proper clock mechanism back then, so she’d been stuck with a simple model that only showed the time. She’d mostly relied on the radio announcers for the time — until Eriks somehow managed to make the small device “click” every hour. How he’d done it, she still hadn’t figured out. He only gave her a knowing grin whenever she asked. A small secret of his, so feather-light and harmless. Her own secrets felt more like shards of metal in her stomach.
She waited for him as evening approached. But he didn’t come — neither early nor at his usual time. So much for the water tank plan, she thought, worrying about him more than she was angry. Eriks was dependable; if he failed to keep his word, he had a reason — a good one.
When she closed the practice a bit earlier than usual and saw him standing in the yard through the kitchen window, she nearly jumped out of her skin — she’d thought, for a split second, that he was a thief. In either case, she would have gone outside. If he had been an intruder, she would have met him with a battered old shotgun that no longer caught anything but dust. For him, she went out with her arms folded, ready to demand to know what in the world he was doing — but the question became unnecessary as soon as she rounded the corner of the house. Eriks had two of the three water canisters beside him and was just lifting the third to the tank behind the house. He looked more sweaty than usual, his hair matted with sand against his skin. He wore no protection for his bare hands or his face. In just a few minutes outside the safety of the house, Meryl had felt as though the wind were sanding off her face.
“Eriks!”
He raised his head, and a hollow smile spread across his lips.
“I thought we’d do that together?!” She stepped closer, eyeing the empty canisters, checking the water level in the tank. It was almost full. He must have gone back and forth countless times to manage that. No wonder he’d vanished all afternoon. He only gave a barely perceptible shrug.
“Selma didn’t have much to do today, so I had time. You had patients. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
That was pure nonsense, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say so, but she held back. She was sure at least the part about Selma being idle was a lie, but he’d meant to do her a favor. Could she really scold him for that? She opened her mouth to say something, sighed, and let it go. Resigned, she exhaled, grabbed two of the empty canisters, and marched off with them. “Close the tank and come into the practice. You’re going to get a sunburn.”
A few minutes later, he followed her, sitting down on the cot he had spent so many months in nearly two years ago, when she cared for him. Even sitting, they weren’t eye to eye — Meryl was just too short at 150 centimeters.
He unfastened the top button of his shirt. She took his face in her hands, feeling both the fine dust and sand there, as well as the beginnings of stubble prickling her palms. She takes his glasses off his face, tried to keep a stern look, but he seemed so pleased with himself that it almost eclipsed his usual sorrow. And by now, she couldn’t stay mad at him.
“You’ve really got a sunburn,” she observed plainly, though her gaze softened with every word. She went over to a bowl of water she’d prepared while he was still outside, gently dabbed his face, hairline, and neck. If she had rubbed, she’d just be sanding him down more. She studied him, and he looked right back at her — just a second too long, a fraction too intently. Then she turned away as though embarrassed, like a child caught doing something forbidden. She retrieved a jar of cream she’d also prepared, gently applying it to the reddened areas on his face, neck, and the nape of his neck. The first of his scars showed above the collar of his shirt. She knew every one of them — the worst ones by heart. They couldn’t all have come from the July incident, because some had healed too well. But she’d never asked, and he’d never brought them up. Wherever they came from, it must have been terrible.
When she was finished, she looked at him again, meeting his eyes to show she meant what she was about to say.
“Don’t do that again. I mean going for water alone. We can manage that together.” He nodded.
“Promise.”
And she knew he was lying.
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The evening passed the same way it always did: harmoniously, very quietly. Eriks went to bed early. Meryl knew he’d pushed himself too hard hauling water. She was secretly glad she had some extra time to herself before she, too, would call it a night.
She retreated to her attic, armed with the last cup of coffee of the day and a glass of water. The caffeine no longer had any effect on her; she’d likely get withdrawal symptoms if she ever tried going without it.
Along with the cup, she carried the coffee filter from that morning, placing it for now on her desk—a panel once part of a 150-year-old rescue capsule door. She set the mug beside it, went to her dresser, and opened the middle drawer just enough to take it out. At first glance, it held only her underwear and socks, but if you dug around a bit in the back, your hand would bump against an old metal case — and that was what she was after.
She lifted it out, unlocked it by deftly spinning a combination dial — 0321, her „birthday“ — and slid the lid open with a click. Inside was a trove of memories: Sharpe’s bandana, an empty Snickers wrapper, Poppy — her doll — a photo album (are three photos, enough to call it that?), and more. At the moment, though, Meryl’s eyes were only for a little plastic container in the front right corner. It had once held screws, nuts, and nails, which were long gone. Instead, it contained an assortment of seeds in various sizes, shapes, and colors. They were all dead. Burned by the crash on the planet 150 years ago.
She picked out three sets of three seeds, then closed the container and the case again, tucking them back in the drawer, which she slid back into the dresser. Nothing else betrayed her secret, and Meryl moved on to step two.
From another drawer beneath her desk, she pulled out three half-broken mugs and cups. They already contained crumbled eggshells, smuggled upstairs after breakfast, small and crushed. Meryl emptied the used coffee grounds onto them, mixed everything with her fingers, and finally added the seeds. Three identical seeds per mug, followed by the tiniest sip from her water glass. She wiped her hands on her skirt. It needed washing anyway. Besides, tasks like these always made her too nervous to fuss over her clothes.
She stared tensely down into the mugs, while also listening to the silent house — only the sand grains outside whispered and scratched against windows, doors, and walls.
She took a deep breath. Her heart hammered in her chest; she almost thought she could hear Sharpe’s voice, warning her to be careful, not to overdo it. But it had to be done.
Meryl picked up the first cup. Her breathing was short and irregular at first; only after she forced herself to inhale and exhale consciously did it calm down. Still, it took a few minutes. Her face, so tense a moment ago, relaxed; her hands stopped trembling. She closed her eyes, feeling the hard surface of the cup — and what lay beneath: the damp coffee grounds, the echo of beans once roasted, ground, and brewed. The microorganisms that lived in it. And them. The three seeds. Dry and seemingly dead, unmoving, silent. But Meryl heard them call. She heard every living thing. Some screamed, some sang, some stuttered, some babbled, some sobbed. Life poured out of every pore around her. Out of every person, every animal, every Worm, every single-cell organism, every Plant. As a child, she had sometimes been unable to bear it, this cacophony of existence. She hadn’t been able to filter it out or escape it — until Sharpe had come up with the idea of the cassette tapes. And even now, when the world got too loud, she simply turned up the volume.
At this moment, though, she heard only the seeds. Their whispers turned into soft voices. If she had opened her eyes, she would have seen those seemingly dead seeds begin to sprout, the first tender shoots pushing upward through the coffee grounds, straining toward her, toward the light.
And if those shoots had had eyes, they would have seen her, standing there in her bedroom, her skin giving off a cold glow in patterns — symmetrical, yet following no design the human eye would recognize.
No one in Rustwich saw that glow, not even her nearest neighbors, had they looked out of their windows. Sand Steemers clung to Meryl’s attic skylight, soaking up the unearthly, life-giving light, which vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Then they, too, scattered again.
She carried her new seedlings over to her wardrobe, which was so much more than just a place for clothes. Opening the double doors, she ducked under the hanging bundles of herbs waiting to dry so she could grind them into powder. Small dishes of sand and charcoal absorbed the little moisture that the plants released, the ones Meryl was growing on a ledge inside. Mint, lady’s mantle, arnica, and chamomile were just a few of the seedlings in little coffee cups. Now the three new cups — aloe, valerian, and poppy — joined them. Meryl closed the wardrobe again and turned her attention to the separate drawer beneath it. She opened it, glanced at the jars inside, and read her handwritten labels. Mold was growing in these jars. She only kept the good mold — green and white; anything else was thrown out. She took a fresh jar and one with a flourishing green-white bloom, opened both, and scraped a small amount of mold off with the now-empty, still-damp coffee filter. Then she placed the filter in its own jar and repeated the process that she had just done with the coffee cups: water droplets, light, life. Afterward, she put the freshly moldy filter back in the drawer, hoping it would hold steady in quality. The jar she’d taken mold from would be used tomorrow to make a tonic for Theo. That was for tomorrow, though. Tonight, she had another job.
Stored in another small compartment of the wardrobe were Briarberries, a variety grown in the lab not long after the crash. While the plant’s sap was meant for making sunscreen, the berries of this thorny plant had another use. They were inedible because of the tannins they contained — even Worms and Tomas steered clear, and they weren’t exactly picky — but these small black spheres, reminiscent of marbles, were excellent for dyeing. Meryl scooped a handful of them into a mortar she kept in her room specifically for that purpose. As she crushed them, a pungent sour smell rose into her nose and made her eyes water, but she pressed on, unmoved. She added small pieces of charcoal and some leftover egg from breakfast, stirring until the mixture formed a kind of gooey paste. Then she applied this paste to her hair with a brush, especially thick at the roots. Immediately, her scalp began tingling, as though it were electric — or simply fed up with being slathered in stinky mush once a month. Meryl never took pity on it.
When she was done, she found a roll of aluminum foil and wrapped it around her head in front of the broken mirror. The color needed to process overnight, and she didn’t want to ruin her pillow. Sharpe had once called this “conspiracy chic” and then laughed. She had never quite understood the joke but thought of it by the same name in her head.
One last time that day, she went downstairs to rinse the mortar in the kitchen sink. In the next room, she could hear Eriks tossing on his mattress again. She wanted so badly to wake him, to take his hand, to show him the plants in the wardrobe. To finally come clean. He would probably have liked the blossoms. But that wasn’t possible. She couldn’t, mustn’t. Her heart seized up at the thought. How much time did she have left? How long before someone noticed she always looked the same? When she’d arrived, people had looked at her full of doubt if she claimed she was only eighteen. Not until she reached her “mid-twenties” did her appearance match the age she claimed.
Originally, she’d planned to stay in Rustwich only until she turned “thirty.” But Eriks, by appearing in her life, had inadvertently torn up that plan. How much longer could she stay? Until “thirty-three”? “Thirty-five,” tops? How many more years was that, really? Ten years at the absolute max. Leaving him as a “good friend” would already hurt; leaving him as her “beloved” would destroy her. No. Better to keep her distance. She and Eriks had been dancing around each other for a year now. He was at least as broken as she was, in his own way, but he would let her into his heart if she made the effort. She hoped he’d find someone else. Soon, if possible. If he moved out, she’d be alone again — more alone than ever — but in ten years, it wouldn’t hurt so badly.
A tear silently rolled down her cheek. Meryl didn’t sniffle. She wiped it away soundlessly and swallowed hard. The clamor of life in the village suddenly seemed so loud she could barely stand it, and she turned on the radio to hear a voice in all that noise — something to focus on.
“The seed remembers the sky.
The rest of us will burn.”
Those crazies and their apocalypse again. Suddenly furious, she switched the radio off. Anger dampened the clamor in her head. She rubbed her cheeks once more, more roughly than the first time.
She went back upstairs and felt like slamming doors, like screaming. Instead, she silently put the mortar away and lay down in her bed. Beyond her window, the Sand Steemers were once again — or still — drifting about. Meryl usually liked them. They were pretty in their weightless hovering and their glow. Now, though, she felt like they were watching her. Exposed. She turned away from the window, closed her eyes, and pretended she needed sleep — that it was anything more than a hobby, a habit. It worked. Meryl fell asleep, and she did not dream.