Whistler remembered her one trip outside the ring. A blue so bright it felt artificial. Clouds that were white and round, and not dark and angry. And the wind, not the humid blasts of air that she’d known all her life, but full and free, as if the sky itself was hugging her.
Passing through the curtain had felt like being reborn.
That was decades ago, when she was still a child, when the idea of a holiday so far away wasn’t unfathomable. She had kept a souvenir from that day: a blade of grass encased in resin. It was green enough to be artisan-made, but with delicate touches of yellow and brown that no workshop could have crafted. Now it was suspended on the side of her mirror. She could see it as she got ready for work everyday, adjusting her face-paint in preparation for the long hours ahead. A reminder and a promise, all in one.
It was the season of shadow. The days, already so short, were now barely long enough to qualify. The hour or so of sunlight during summer months had shrunk to a handful of minutes that only made the night feel darker. And where once the light had engulfed Whistler’s home, every year it drifted further. Currently it was a fiery rim on buildings far in the distance, and nothing more.
Face-paint now done, Whistler snuffed her phosphor lamp and admired her gently glowing handiwork in the mirror. The pond-green markings reflected pleasantly on her dark skin and brown eyes, and she’d done a particularly good job of framing her features that day. The paint was functional at its core, yes, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t look good. Satisfied, she headed out of her room.
***
Carver often said that ‘season of shadow’ was a misnomer. The days were short, sure, but light was everywhere.
Their shift started early, but the lamplighters had already begun their work, and the whole town was bathed in blue and green. Soon, shops would start opening, and light from their gaudy signs and warm interiors would spill out into the streets. A few hours later, the first dirigibles would set out, waving spotlights and dropping advertising lanterns like friendly munitions. Kids would fly their jellyfish kites, and mushrooms too young to harvest would light up in window-boxes.
Carver liked to imagine the blackness above all this as the canopy of some great forest. That their morning walk to work was a trek between trees, with the flashing signs, falling lanterns, and impatient crowds easily reimagined as the scurrying of strange creatures on a teeming forest floor.
This pleasant daydream was rudely interrupted when a pamphlet was thrust into their hands by some insufferable stranger. They were in hanging black rags, to represent the Anvil descending on them, or some other inane political metaphor.
Too polite to throw it away, Carver made a show of giving it a scan.
Closer each year, it read, over a ridiculous illustration of a black disc hovering above a ruined city. Act now before it’s too late.
***
‘I still don’t think it’s getting closer,’ they told Whistler, who had been given the same pamphlet. It was about an hour into their shift, and it was looking like a bad haul. Conversation, of any kind, made the work more tolerable. ‘It’s getting wider, but it hasn’t moved.’
Whistler rolled her eyes, and, realizing Carver probably couldn’t see this, said, ‘And what are you basing this on exactly?’
‘My eyes,’ they said. ‘If it’s gotten as close as they say it has, wouldn’t a blimp have bumped into it by now?’
‘Unless it’s super big and far away, dumbass.’
Whistler felt a light punch on her shoulder from a gloved hand that was slightly covered in soil. Carver’s dopey grin glowed faintly in the lamplight.
‘Well, maybe if it’s so far away we shouldn’t give a shit,’ they said.
‘You and I need to give a shit, because it decides how many of these little fucks we need to dig up.’
She held up one of the aforementioned little fucks: a tiny puffball mushroom, about half an inch across. After an hour of rummaging through the soil without any luck, she had found one. It wasn’t the glowing kind, but their lamps lit the little morsel up like a beacon.
‘Jackpot,’ said Carver. ‘Maybe today won’t suck after all.’
It had sucked. They met their quotas, but barely, and that meant no extra pay. Worse still, it meant the last pick of the mushrooms they took home. Grafter, a quiet fortress of a woman, had kindly left a few juicier morsels behind, but it seemed like Hooper, a middle-aged coworker who admittedly looked like he’d never eaten in his life, had gotten to them right after. Whistler and Carver got a handful of puny puffballs each, and that was that.
The two walked back into town together. It was amber hour, the best time to eat, and they knew a spot that made great cricket-dough noodles. They’d even throw in a discount if you provided the mushrooms.
This didn’t stop Carver from popping one into their mouth during the walk.
‘You psycho,’ said Whistler. ‘That thing would’ve been golden brown and beautiful if you’d waited forty minutes.’
‘Waiching ifn’t my shtyle,’ said Carver, mouth full of raw mushroom.
‘You’re not having any of mine if you change your mind.’
Carver swallowed happily. ‘We’ll see about that.’
They walked in silence for a bit. The workday had weighed on Whistler, who couldn’t help but notice the worry on their overseer’s face. The yield was only a few shrooms short of yesterday, and the day before had been a good one. But the writing seemed to be on the wall: this burrow wasn’t going to be open long.
If Carver registered any of this, they didn’t show it.
‘How do you do it?’ Whistler asked.
‘Do what?’
‘Act so calm.’
Carver shrugged. They were in their late twenties, same as Whistler, but they had the fresh-faced look of someone who’d never known strife.
‘It just doesn’t bother me,’ they said. ‘Maybe someday we’ll run out of mushrooms, but today?’ They popped another into their mouth. ‘I’ve gotch plenchy.’
Whistler groaned. ‘If you finish all of them before we get to the Red Ladle, you’re gonna regret it.’
***
They had finished all their mushrooms, but it was Whistler who had come to regret it. Carver’s barren bowl of beige noodles had tugged at her heartstrings, and she’d rolled her eyes and tossed one of her beautiful batter-fried mushrooms into it. Carver was already wolfing the entire arrangement down.
‘You’re too good to me,’ they said between bites.
Whistler rolled her eyes again and slowly munched on her meal. The Red Ladle, an open-air little eatery frequented by foragers, was busy as ever. But it was not lost on Whistler how sparse the actual food people were ordering was. Chopper, its loud and kindly chef, would cook up anything you brought along with cricket-noodles or ant-rice, but he also had menu items on top of that for those who could spare the coin. Puffball stews, umbrella curries, even a coral salad if you had a little extra cash that week. Some said he even had a stash of frozen vegetables somewhere.
But none of the bowls held much more than beige noodles and red-brown rice. There was the occasional morsel someone had scrounged from work, but it wasn’t much.
Chopper must’ve noticed Whistler’s furrowed brow, because he’d grabbed the pan he was working with and moved it to the stove right in front of her. They were regulars, and the old man was fond of them.
‘Why the long face, girl?’ he boomed. ‘Food’s not up to snuff?’
Whistler shook her head and gave him an easy smile. ‘Your food’s excellent as always, uncle,’ she said. Carver made an incomprehensible noise through a full mouth in agreement.
‘Then what’s wrong? Is it the slim pickings?’
‘Yep,’ she said, breaking eye contact to peer into her bowl. ‘Tough times, y’know?’
‘Couldn’t toss us a leek for being such loyal customers, could you unc?’ said Carver.
Chopper gave an ear-shattering laugh.
‘Would if I could, pup,’ he said, ‘but I have a business to run. You don’t want to know how much it costs to ship greens down here. I was thinking of stopping, but every now and again someone decides to splurge.’
‘Yield that bad?’
‘Worse every day. We lose about a hundred farms a year. Shroom supply’s gotta be better than that, right?’
Whistler gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Better than that, sure,’ she said. But not by much.
Carver looked up from their noodles. ‘What do you think, Chopper?’ They motioned generally at the sky, where the Anvil surely stretched above them. ‘Bigger or closer?’
‘Makes no difference to me,’ said Chopper. ‘Whichever it is, it’s making my life harder. But what can you do?’
‘The dipshits with the flyers say it’s all the lamps that’s causing it,’ said Carver. They chuckled, and so did Chopper.
‘Can’t exactly scurry around in the dark, can we?’ he said. Whistler said nothing. She could see a world in which they’d have to.
***
Hours later, Carver was lying wide awake in bed. Joiner had moved out a whole year ago, and occasionally his absence would sting with a particular sharpness. Carver didn’t think it was him specifically they missed, just the presence of someone else in their tiny apartment.
These feelings tended to make themselves known during ruby hour, when the soft red glow of the neighbourhood phosphors snuck into apartments in which responsible people were supposed to be sleeping. It was the best and worst time to be alone with your thoughts.
Carver’s sleepless gaze wandered over to their desk, where an unlit phosphor lamp hung above a pile of abandoned projects. They half climbed, half fell, out of bed.
There were strict costs and quotas around phosphor use, and ignoring all that, a sunlight phosphor during ruby hour could ruin your sleep for weeks. But Carver’s sleep couldn’t get much worse, could it? Surely an extra half-hour wouldn’t hurt right?
They touched the hanging orb and let it bathe them in its soft, golden light. They soaked it in for a moment, the calm that washed over them flecked with anxiety. Then they pulled out a sheet from the mess of abandoned projects strewn around the table. It was their latest, forever unfinished, painting.
It was of a forest.
Carver had never seen one, but they had dreams about them almost every night. They’d find themselves in a maze of green stalks that disappeared into the clouds, cool clean air billowing out of them in great puffs, each smelling fresh and crisp, exactly how they imagined leeks would. They’d run between the trunks, immediately getting lost and not caring. They were determined to translate this vision to the page, but they had the sneaking suspicion their rendition looked far more like mushrooms than the real thing.
The thought of mushrooms made their stomach groan. They were a wiry creature, with the kind of physique that made people ask where all their food went. But lately everyone had far too little to eat, and Carver too was starting to feel it.
‘Tomorrow’s got to have a better haul,’ they muttered, as they added a big blue chunk of leaves to their painting.
***
The following day’s haul wasn’t terrible, but their shift was cut short.
‘We don’t want to burn through this burrow too fast,’ their overseer said. ‘Sorry everyone, I know you need the hours. Please help yourself to an extra shroom.’
Grafter gave Whistler and Carver sympathetic pats on the shoulder as she and Hooper left the burrow, discussing something quietly. Whistler and Carver walked back into town while it was still opal hour for the first time in months. They had time to kill and decided to spend it on a visit to the star lake.
It wasn’t a lake, of course, and neither of them had seen a star in their lives. But there was a closed mine not far from work with a base of volcanic glass that reflected the glowworms on the ceiling, and that was as good an approximation as they were going to get.
Whistler watched the glowworms, embedded in the rock, unable to tell if they were trapped or thriving.
‘We could always start eating those guys,’ Carver said.
‘They’re poisonous.’
‘That’s what Big Worm wants you to think.’
This would usually get a laugh out of Whistler, but instead she was quiet.
‘Seriously,’ she said at length. ‘How do you do it?’
For a moment, Carver said nothing. They knew Whistler well enough to know this was serious.
‘Do what?’
‘Do this,’ said Whistler, her voice trembling slightly. ‘Aren’t you worried? Even a little bit? Do you think about the future at all?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘And it doesn’t scare you?’
Carver said nothing, and Whistler turned her gaze to the lake. It looked like a clear pool you could dive into, despite being a wall of rock that would break every bone in your body if you tried.
‘I’ve never seen much in my future,’ she said. ‘I just knew I wanted to see grass again.’
Carver knew about Whistler’s childhood trip outside the ring. They knew it was a small marker of privilege, a boon from a social class that many had fallen out of as the years progressed and the Anvil expanded. Carver themselves had never had the chance.
‘I know I’m lucky I saw it at all,’ she said. ‘And I know it’s impossible now. But even this shitty life, knee deep in gunk, rooting around for a handful of tiny mushrooms? Even that’s slipping out from between my fingers. I look ahead and I don’t even see myself stuck. I see nothing. And I can’t fucking handle it.’
She looked back at Carver again, and asked, ‘So how do you?’
Carver was quiet. There was a somber quality to their expression that aged them considerably.
‘I paint,’ they said.
Whistler stared.
‘You paint?’ she said. This was a dimension of Carver that felt entirely alien. ‘Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?’
‘I’m not very good at it,’ they said. ‘I thought I could be a painter, once, or an artisan at the very least. But now I just do it to stay sane.’
Whistler was quiet. ‘What do you paint?’ she asked, allowing her voice to be tender.
‘Trees.’
‘How do you find the time?’
Carver smiled weakly. ‘I usually don’t,’ they said. ‘That’s another reason you haven’t seen them.’
Whistler returned the smile and looked out at the lake, imagining a world in which she had time for a hobby, or the gall to dream of making a living as a painter. She thought of her own dreams. To be so good at finding mushrooms that she could afford another trip outside the ring. To pass through the curtain of rain and mist that surrounded it. To walk into fresh air and green, ever-shrinking fields.
‘I’d like to, sometime,’ she said. ‘Maybe I should paint too.’
‘It won’t fix things.’
‘At this point, what will?’
***
The pamphleteers had some ideas. Carver looked at the one stuffed into their hands that day, really looked at it, at the horrific disc and the world it was killing. The pamphlet had instructions on organizing, small changes you could make, protests to join, and politicians to pressure. Carver noted something they’d initially missed from the illustration, the way buildings grew taller as they approached the edge of the ring.
The pamphleteer seemed to read their mind, because they said, ‘They don’t just want to have light. They want to make sure no one else does, too.’
‘They?’
The pamphleteer looked to the horizon in answer, at the towers that dominated it, as tiny fingers of sunlight crept their way through rare gaps between them. Carver imagined floor upon floor full of greens, imagined their inhabitants having fields of produce in their backyard, imagined ensuring as little food and light as possible would make it past them.
‘They keep building outwards,’ the pamphleteer went on, shifting a rag away from their eyes. ‘We only lose half our farms to Anvil growth. The other half is from new homes they build outside the ring. They made this hell and they don’t even have to live in it.’
Carver thought about how all these people had names, how many were emblazoned on the lanterns that were, even now, falling around them from on high.
‘If this is real,’ Carver said at length, ‘they’ll die too.’
‘Yes. But they’ll die last.’
***
Whistler stared down at the commiserative mushroom they’d been handed. They’d dug it out of the dirt about an hour ago, before they’d all been summoned to the sorting shed and told the burrow would be shutting down operations in a month.
They looked to their right at Carver, who had just frozen in the process of popping their own mushroom into their mouth. Whistler rolled her eyes. Some things never changed.
She felt a gloved hand on her shoulder and craned her neck up at Grafter, who was wearing a deliberately neutral expression.
‘Was just a matter of time,’ she said simply. ‘You’ve got plans after this?’
‘Probably the Red Ladle to get these fried up,’ said Whistler. Grafter laughed dryly.
‘I mean what you’re going to do next. With your life.’
Whistler shook her head, the void that was her imagined future more oppressive than ever.
‘Well,’ said Grafter. ‘While you figure that out, here’s something I found down in the muck. I thought you kids might appreciate it.’
She handed an ancient card to Whistler. It was scratched and faded, and white lines snaked across the print where it had been folded and unfolded. And yet the image was unmistakable, even to her unfamiliar eyes. She passed it over to Carver.
Carver looked down at a postcard of a forest. And not just any forest. They didn’t know how they knew, but they were certain: this was the exact forest the burrow had sprouted from. They’d always been tacitly aware that they worked every day in a graveyard of trees, what with long-dead wood being fertile ground for all manner of fungi. But seeing proof with their own eyes was another matter entirely.
They looked at the brown monoliths stretching into the sky. They’d always pictured them largely straight, but these behemoths meandered and twisted, following no clear path through the air until they ended in clouds of green. They felt a distant ache as they stared, but it wasn’t even the forest they were mourning. The image was beautiful, sure, but it wasn’t the forest of their dreams. They felt the dawning realization that what they longed for had never existed.
They handed it back to Whistler, who quietly turned it over.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Look at this.’
In much fresher ink, someone had scrawled a set of coordinates, and a tiny black disk with a crude fist bursting through it. Whistler looked at Carver and nodded, already knowing what she wanted to do. Carver looked back, unsure, then nodded as well.
***
The criers announced that a blimp had crashed into the Anvil. The details were murky, but it seemed that a dirigible had disappeared into the black disc and come back down in flames. The rest had been warned to fly a little lower, but other than that, not much had changed.
Whistler and Carver piled into the Red Ladle, minds half occupied by where they were going next. They slid their combined wages for the week towards Chopper.
They both asked for leeks.
Akiel Surajdeen