Chapter Text
One hears all kinds of rumors. They cluster at the community well, hang around the bathhouse, buzz about in the fields, or even swoop in on the mouth of the occasional traveler. By and large, they’re everyday stuff: the typical dramas and tragedies, spats and disputes, small affairs and matchmakings which spice up monotonous life.
But there are also whispers about those legendary people, places, and events which have shaped the world we inhabit. Such stories are the vaguest of all, and are told and retold with ten thousand variations and contradictory embellishments; yet they are also the most stubbornly remembered.
This lonely valley, for instance. Where I live, not too far away, we have a solid collection of books and physical archives (although the older generations lament how much more has apparently been lost). In all of it, there’s not a word about this place. No, you’ll only hear of it in rumors, and never quite the same details.
‘The Valley of Shades,’ dramatic older folk would call it to intimidate me and my friends. Followed by warnings of the various ghosts, aliens, robbers, armies, wolves, giant beasts, and supernatural children supposed to inhabit it. All of the old entrances are impassable, and curiosity isn't considered a virtue, so it has been left undisturbed.
A wanderer recently mentioned a path he’d found that might enter it, but which he had not explored himself. The hidden pass is broken and tumbled, more climbing involved than walking, as if the land itself is trying to stop you from entering or leaving. It’s taken most of the day just to cross over the last ridge.
The vale is lovely and haunting from this high vantage point. A wide bay glimmering in the late afternoon sunlight occupies most of the low ground. That seems wrong based on what little the stories agree on—but there are skyscrapers’ spindly skeletons sticking out of the fiery water, and it makes more sense. The corpse of a lost city rings around a dark and indiscernibly deep circle in the dead center of the bay.
Maybe there really was some mighty fortress here years ago, some marvelous cave system under all that water. Maybe this place was someone’s home.
The Giant Head and Her shattered grin peek in, half-sunk into the sea, without change or decay amid all the wreckage. Behind Her, the boundless water stretches out of sight. Many people are frightened by Her face and keep away from any ridges or hills that offer a glimpse. For me, She’s always been there, a fact of life, admittedly an odd one. Ever since I was little, I’ve always wondered exactly where She is looking.
Here. She’s looking here.
There’s still some dry land deep in the valley, with a curving white beach serving as a shore far below. I’ve never seen such perfectly bleached sand, like a coast made entirely of quicklime. Further in, beyond a strip of tumbled ruins, there are clusters of shorter buildings and complexes, the sort you might find in old suburbs. They aren’t burnt down: a rare thing for pre-Impact towns. Sheets cover many windows. There's an occasional wisp that might be smoke, might just be evening mist. Nothing is moving. It looks like forbidden land.
Picturesque as it is, the winding descent isn't easy. The strain scorches my legs and makes me regret forgetting my walking stick in my rush to leave. The broken ‘road’ I’m following would be great stairs for a giant. Everyone says that before She lost Her head, the Archangel was enormous. ‘Big as a building,’ one person might say. ‘She stood over the whole world,’ another will tell you. They all agree that She emerged from around here. Another reason not to come.
At the bottom of the giant’s staircase, a paper-thin rim of pale beach tucked against the foothills barely grants passage to the remnants of the lost city. It would be submerged if it weren’t low tide. The smooth and stainless sand is soothing on my aching feet. I can’t tell what they’re made of, but the damp grains are round and silky to the touch.
Along the narrow way, a rubble-choked doorway peeks out of a cliffside. ‘SHELTER B-16,’ it’s marked. I’ve seen these before. The locals who are, say, a few years older than me and upwards, occasionally reminisce about huddling in these places during some sort of attack that used to happen. It’s hard to comprehend, and they themselves don’t know what they were hiding from. Our poets have let their imaginations run wild.
Ugh. They weren’t discernible from the lookout, but down here and up close, these statues in the bay…What horrid things. Crosses are common icons, but not such massive and grotesque renditions: Eyeless, animalistic faces, with huge, meaty lips and sharp teeth lining a disgusting snout. Bloated and pitted torsos. Arms ending in claw-like hands stretched out wide. A putrid stench, the sickly-sweet scent of rotting flesh, wafts from them and mingles with the salty stink of seaweed and dead fish.
Their malice is visceral. At the same time, there’s something primordial and familiar about them, like a forgotten nightmare or deep memory from early childhood.
Why are they here? What sculptor mocked them out of stone and set them in the water like that? It must have been years ago: a couple of the statues are fully intact, but others are broken and trunkless, just vast legs sticking out of the sun-flamed bay.
The bloodied sun is near the horizon, and fingers of purple are creeping in from behind the crimson. The rapidly rising tide is rinsing away my tracks and shutting the way out. I’ll have to pick up the pace before it completely swallows this land-bridge by nightfall. I’m not a good swimmer. The waters are blue nowadays, but when I was a kid, they were visibly contaminated. It was gross.
Before long, the reddening tide chases me to the main beach. Colossal mounds of wrecked buildings cordon it off from the mainland. No footprint mars the lone and level sands. The only sound is the dogged lapping of the ocean inlet; there is neither the call of birds nor the whistle of a breeze.
This place is enchanting, and something about it calls out. There’s that feeling welling up again, a non-memory emerging from the basement of the mind, pounding on the door, jiggling the handle. The impression is mostly lonely and bitter, but there’s a slight sense of hope too.
Despite the hardships we’ve endured, my folks and the rest of my family always go on and on about possibilities and second chances. Actually, even our resident pessimists sometimes do, much to their own confusion and everyone else’s amusement. That hope is hardwired in many peoples’ minds, though no one knows quite how or why.
I’ve never felt that sentiment so strongly just by being in a place, like stepping into a much bigger story, into the myths that drape this valley. The center has shifted away.
As much as I’d like to, I can’t stay. I need to find someplace for the night.
The ruins look ominous, but they stand between me and the more preserved areas. A wide boulevard which merges into the sand leads in the right direction. The empty eyes of crumbling towers glare down. Their lengthening shadows are distressing, conjuring false blurs of something moving, prowling, stalking…but it’s only my imagination.
The street is just as broken as the mountain road, but also rather peaceful as you go further in. Tall weeds and grasses have grown up through the many cracks in the concrete, and leafy vines have claimed fallen telephone poles and towers, stringing up new lines of their own. Moss and lichen beard over old billboards. Sometimes springs send streams susurrusing along gutter-riverbeds or sluicing down stairs-turned-rapids.
Anywhere outside of the bigger settlements tends to be like this. I know such places very well. They have a sad and nostalgic air, of course; they used to be homes for several times the population we have now. But at least plants and animals have found shelter in—
No. There’s someone there. There has to be! In the corner of my eye, just over in that alleyway, staring at me. I couldn’t register any features, only a human shape. Definitely not an animal. But it’s a dead end. Nothing there.
…
‘The Valley of Shades.’ Maybe I should’ve listened. The hollow echo of my hiking boots is suddenly excruciating. The vanishing sunset is less a beautiful accent, more an alarm.
It only gets worse as I rush and stumble along. Something seems to flit between pools of evening shadow and duck into alleys, further and further ahead each time, dancing around the edge of my vision, until the oppressive lines of desolate buildings give way to wider vistas.
I finally pass into open space as the last of the daylight bleeds away. Fields of grass and young trees rustle between cracked parking lots and lanes. The occasional apartment complex or shop looms above them all watchfully. The twilight fog is thickening exponentially, and the rising wind is whispering. Something is breathing around me.
There’s a cluster of tiered apartment buildings about a kilometer away that will surely have a decent roof, maybe even a fully intact room. I hate using them; the belongings left there (especially if they’re a child’s) make it clear that I don’t belong. But, any port in a storm.
As I hurry there, my heart pounding, I notice that off to the side there are—
There are some plots that look cultivated. Not wild. That field over there against the foothills—water has been diverted toward it through gated canals to form paddies. The season is still early, and the past winter was harsh, but I think I can see…the little seedlings of…rice…
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
From out of the mist, and on all sides, footsteps scrape into soil or scuff along asphalt. There’s nowhere to run. Turn back and I’ll be facing whoever or whatever has just outnumbered and outmaneuvered me. Rush forward and I’ll fall straight into the paddies,
Click.
If I don’t get shot first.
A youngish woman’s voice clips out terse commands. It has a cold edge that makes the village watchmen sound like a bunch of babies in comparison.
“Throw off your pack. Hands on your head, down on your knees. Five seconds. Go.” No ‘or else’ needed.
My ruck sack and I hit the ground like obliging (and rapidly sobering) drunkards caught redhanded and redfaced with their moonshine. Something cold and metallic presses against the back of my head; I can guess what. They’re a rare sight, but we keep one or two back home just in case. Home…
“He’s alone, you said?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m—”
I earn a crisp smack upside the skull.
“Didn’t ask you. Anyway, he’s alone?”
“Yes, since entering the valley.” The feminine reply (also from behind) is ethereal. I’ve never heard anyone sound like that: somehow both speaking up and whispering. “I think it would be best to simply—”
“I’ll be dealing with him first, no offense. You’ll be too nice and still break him.”
“…I see.” The reply drips with resignation.
“Great! Tired, champ?” The tougher voice definitely addresses me this time. “We don’t get many visitors. It’s quite a trip, getting down here. Especially all in one day.”
I don’t wanna get hit again.
“Come on. You can answer this one.” Playful tone. Bad.
“You worry me,” the weird-soft one mutters.
The protest goes unacknowledged. “Weeellll?”
Both for bosses and for bandits with barrels pressed to your head, the same advice goes: Play along with the joke.
“Yeah. It was tough. I’m exhausted.” I gaze longingly at the paddies. Should’ve tried my luck.
“Good!” she cheers and pulls the gun away. “I have just the thing right here.”
The last thing I remember is the