Composure

Iowa Hill: Episode Nine

Selah used to take comfort in the turn of the seasons, in the way the soil felt under her palm when she lay on her back, in the dark, and looked up into the night sky. She knew her way or could find it again with certainty. But The Flux had flung them far and wide, and now her true north was spinning endlessly. She wanted a javelin in her hand so she could pierce the heart of the world and pin it in place. This Earth was not the mother she once knew. This creature carried a sting.

As a child, she’d had recurring nightmares after watching an old film about a passenger ship disaster. A world turned upside down, sinking, where everyone might drown—sucked into cold blackness to bloat and rot, forgotten. The steel hull trapping them beneath its weight. In these dreams, nothing made sense; she had to think inside out. She would struggle in her sleep, holding her breath until she gasped awake, dead faces peering at her from the shadows, disoriented. She didn't know then, at ten, eleven, twelve, or sixteen, what foreboding was—how to name it. But now, that feeling made sense. She felt it all the time.

Selah tells Rochana, one of the smallest Kennen, stories to send her to sleep.

"Before The Flux, there was a red tricycle in your yard. There was a big sister and live oak leaves in the grass. A shaggy golden dog and sprinklers to run through. A swing set. Rides to town for ice cream in the blue station wagon. Fridge magnets and learning to spell. ‘I spy with my little eye.’ Towers of blocks. Small plastic horses. Neighbor boys with their spit and their mud. Tangles of weeds. Cars on the road you weren't supposed to cross in front of. Graham crackers and milk and naps on your own arms when the lights were dimmed at school. There was an iris garden and a birthday party with water balloons and watermelon. There was wearing Daddy’s too-big boots for the camera and waiting for the bus at the driveway. There was cinnamon toast and the sound of a train in the hills. And safe, safe, safe in your bed."

Who knew what the real story of this child was? Probably nothing that pretty. She had washed up in a shipping container. How in the world did seven kids from different parts of the globe end up inside a shipping container? Nothing good. Nothing nice. But Selah could make nice stories—to take the place of whatever messed-up nightmares this kid had already endured. Maybe the worst parts of the pre-Flux world would slide off the edge of this veil of tears and never return. Sink to the bottom of the sea around them and never rise again. Be lost, like the names of the Anasazi when they broke apart and went their separate ways—becoming Maya and Hopi and Pueblo and Cheyenne instead. Survive and forget. Move on. Adapt.

But when everyone else was silent, breathing slowly in their slumber, Selah slipped back into the wet, dark struggles of her childhood nightscape—or something like it. But it was morphing, just like the whole world.

She was in the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Down in the mosh pit, on the dance floor, in a sea of human bodies moving to the music. She was carried by joy and sweat and rock, like waves undulating across the room. Light bounced off the face of the singer on the stage above her, etching itself into her mind like a mirror floating up to the ceiling of her skull. Flashes of moments—colors, the curve of the gilt baroque arches, the arms of a stranger mashed against hers.

Then, bleeding through this memory of pure joy came other visions—layers of time all squashed together, flickering toward her from the past. Feathered fan dancers, skin, and cello music. The smell of champagne and cigar smoke. Furtive, seedy gropings in the darkened corners of the room. Musk and sweat and semen. Sawdust. Cotton candy. Horses.

Then water—oh God, the water.

Bloated corpses, their dark eyes staring forever into the watery crypt of the Great Hall. She couldn’t breathe. The blue lips of some rotting face spoke to her, gurgling her name...

Selah may have to decide that sleeping is bullshit.