Light glowed warm and apricot from the windows and from the doorjambs, and from the seams. The expense of good tallow, from lamp oil and candle both, made our Residence (sat as it was out on the black of the prairie) like as to a North Star of sorts. Chatter and laughter still rose up from the house, much the way the smell of a baking pie might hint itself just at the close of the oven. Sparing a glance back for my kin still half-wild at revelry, I adjusted the jug I carried, and wrapped my coat tighter about myself. Then I braced for all the unpleasantness which is possible beyond the safety of walls.

Dust kicked up lazily where the evening damp had yet to settle it to bed. I frowned, noting how far the dead overgrazed patches had spread, just even within the span of my memory. At what point could the green of our land no longer satisfy the ruminations of our herd? I would choose to inquire on it to our first hand later.

The roughness of sod and prickle-weed scratched at my ankles as I crossed over our playing-field and set to mount the incline of a low hill. Out here, the vault of heaven was wider than the horizon was meant to fit: some force had snuck a few extra degrees into the arc which fit the stars. Beneath that vision, my neck tingled with the conspiratorial thought that the river of those lights might start to flow unbidden, and all the world might be washed away into the galactic (and me with it).

But no. The pepper-dust constellations twinkled obediently from their set places as my slippers carefully picked out steps in care of lumps or divots. It would not be fair to call the atmosphere warm, but the chill was enough that I had regret for my neglect of socks, and I could with effort produce a hearty breath enough for a wisp of fog.

The dragon coiled from my thoughts into my imaginings. I tried to reconstruct the tremulous trumpet of his voice from my Aunties’ and Momma’s accounts. I picked a shadow, and made it represent a sinuous and pythonic tail. I chose a cloud, and pictured the jade palace of Lylong. It floated imperiously overhead, a fortress of the ’Vader point of view which suppressed the happiness of my people, like a challenge that only I (reluctant, but stoic and handsome) could rise to face.

Though, it did occur to me that I could not ever become so bold a hero, not unless I first came into the possession of a suitably fine and striking hat (for the purposes of silhouette, which was most important for any true warrior).

Turning back was no longer an option, as my sight had since adjusted to the dim. I needed every cone and rod at their maximum, if I might continue to traverse in the absence of color. Finally, and after some few minutes and the generous part of a furlong, I found the object of my search: a shape resolved and moved in the lee of a grassy rise.

Slothful wind made its gyres between the gentle curves of landscape. While it possessed no great velocity, it moved with such volume that its dull and overcoming sound did preclude me from hearing (at that distance) my Momma as she cried.

“Momma,” I called to her. Conjuring up a soothing tone which I (as being hers) had studied from her love, I made to continue. “Momma, it’s not right to be out-of-doors at such an hour.”

“Todd?” She croaked. “Baby no-o. Pleash, Momma’s al-ight, ukay? Jusht go – g’home.”

The jug I’d carried out to her sloshed as I hefted it. “I’ve got some water for you Momma. You’ll feel better if you take some now, and before bed. I promise.”

Osberh Zugravescu of Memphis-lost, survivor of the end, lady of the Freeholds at Ghost Perch - and my own and only mother in the world, curled up tangled in a heavy coat on the slope. Her face was turnt down forcefully into the grass, and the glisten of her vomit was stuck on her hair and on her collar.

“No,” she begged me.

So I stepped aside her prone recline and scanned the distance in case of unwelcome opportunists. Spying nothing which moved within our fences, I produced my handkerchief from my breast-pocket and set my terracotta pitcher down; balanced against a level tuft of green. Without the foresight to bring a rag, I grimaced and sacrificed my wiping-cloth for Momma’s dignity.

“It’s nothin’, Momma. Won’t it feel better to clean up a bit?” I spared a splash to rinse off her sick, and then brought her chin up to dab at her mouth. The acid tang of curdled garden casserole and paneer inspired in me an empathic nausea. “Isn’t that better?” I smiled for her comfort.

“Mmhm,” she argued, as a chestnut lock slipped and fell back into her mess.

I touched her wrist to set aside the hand she meant to shoo me with. I hummed to her. I delivered a regimented dosage of sips to her at intervals.

“Auntie Mabel finished the story,” I mentioned. “Of how Lylong was smote down, and our Lady saved us.” I placed my hand in hers and squeezed her fingers. I sat and made to spot out nebulae from the clusters above.

“Saivt,” Momma spat. She tried to roll back into what I’d separated from her, so I helped her scooch away to a cleaner spot. “What’d sh’save? Whuh wur we suvved frm?” She moaned as I lifted her to sit upright and leant against my shoulder. I had to brace myself with my arm on the other side.

“Us, Momma,” I whispered, as my view became bleary. My sleeve was the only clean I had left available, so I scrubbed the deficiency from my eyes with my cuff. “The free holders of the wide lands, who keep faith with us. The venturous rangers of the long roads, with whom we make our enterprise.”

“Ha! Whet a... poverty, t’ given – be givin’ sech thanks fer fractions,” she hiccuped, “of what we was.”

“I even give thanks,” I ignored her, “for those wicked folk of the Polischtadt, who for all their doings at least deserve to live and to pursue their happiness. And for Holler Country, even if they are the source of our libations.”

“You ain’t ever known th’ Holler – how far mad they’d gone…”

“Ashli has told me stories even, of the Covens of Saint Lawrence: arcane and grim,” I wrapped my arm about Momma’s shoulder as her protests quieted. “In the woodland and fog of the far north and east, they hold vigil ‘gainst the unholy revenants of Old New York. Did you know that, Momma?”

She shook her head.

“Do you want to know a secret?” I nudged her encouragingly. “There is a place in the ruin of old Mexico, – beneath the shadow of risen Mictlan: that land where warlords and narco-chieftans once prosecuted their terrors. You must know it, you yourself have told me as much. Well! Those plunderers are since overturned and cast out. The good peoples there have, in courage, made a new nation for themselves. Can you believe it? Not one city, but a country restored.”

I thought on the subject of my small collection of newspapers, and in particular ‘The Village Gossip’ (El Chisme). They lived in a neat stack, folded and hidden in my section of bookshelf. Their passages were littered with my notations in pencil, most especially my feverish underlines where I suspected the publication had shamelessly cribbed from Montesquieu or Voltaire.

“I think I should like to visit there one day once I am grown,” I blushed. It was not a dream I had shared with anyone before.

Momma shook with her weeping. I offered her the heart of my strength and she bled it out until both she and I were left with none. “You’re too young, baby. You’re too young. There’s no wall can last, there’s no hearth’ll endure. They think they unnerstand, but no. The ‘Vaders ain’t gone, we didn’t win. They’ll come back, an’ everthink we done built’ll burn.”

I held her hair back as she retched until her stomach was wrung dry, and her heaving served no use but to cause her suffering. Shivering, with my coat about her, she made a mighty effort to choke down hydration by increment of the quarter-teaspoon. As often as not, she failed.

“Do you think we were safe,” she mumbled, “in Galin – Glatan – Gatlinburg? We lost everythink. We couldn’t b-bring nothing. We weren’t safe. We weren’t free. They beat people. Then she died and the dogs…” Momma’s eyes unfocused, “people kept dogs in their houses with their children.”

I tried to bury myself in her side. Without my coat, my teeth began to chatter.

“You think that was the end of it? That was the Second Calummi-Calumnit… Calamity. SECOND!” She wailed with such force as if she’d given up on hiding. “There was twelve, baby. There were twelve of them.”

She staggered to her feet and tilted dangerously.

“The Dirge? Dibn’t even count,” she laughed. “Fuggink apparently. Sorreh, babeh. Lankuage. Shorreh.”

I offered her my hand again. “It’s okay.”

“Thas hommany theens... hoW. Many. Things.” She paused to drink again with determination. “We suffered. So much I don’t even know which was which, an’ what counted, until I just wanted to crawl up and die.”

She was going to drop the jug, and I lunged to save it. But I lost her to do it, as she toppled and the crooked bend of her knee pitched my heart into convulsions. So I let the water go, and it spilled to empty rolling downhill. “Momma, don’t talk like that.”

“No, it’s true!” She continued like some perverse sacrament of confession. “Everything was ruined. And everyone was ruined. The Twelve betrayed us when I needed her. She lied to me.”

I knelt down and cradled my Momma’s head in my arms, and behaved with the stupidity of a child.

“That’s why I ran,” she explained. “I had to. I ran until all of my friends died except me. And then he found me, riding on horseback and bearing his arms. That’s how I knew he was blessed.”

Her fingers gripped me tight, without care for if she hurt me. I held her hatefully and hoped I hurt her back.

“Now it’s too late. I hate this place. I wish I didn’t run. I wish I didn’t leave my family. I wish I’d died.”

Far in the northern scrub, a moving figure broke our private audience with the wind. Over the distance and curvature of land, I could only see its head, but that alone implied a certain enormity of size. Then a flare of blue-indigo signaled its flavor, and briefly I thought I could make out its eyes.

Momma shut her eyes tight and the last of her voice spent raggedly. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish I’d died.”