Seasons Eternal

By Siri Paulson

The Wasteland: An airship crash strands a lady and a crewman in a landscape burned by endless summer. They both know who's in charge...but the land holds secrets that will challenge all their preconceptions.

Stasis: In a world where it is eternally autumn, a lonely woman escapes to virtual reality where she can command the seasons. She finds her deceased husband there and refuses to leave.

The Hope of Spring: When danger comes over the glacier to threaten her tribe, Shishiri fights and wins. But she can't fight the glacier itself.

A Chance of Change: Spring, a time of renewal and life. It's something that should belong to everyone--isn't it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: KD
• Release date: Nov 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301783649

Book preview

SEASONS ETERNAL

Stories of a World Frozen in Time

Edited by

Siri Paulson

Stories by

Kit Campbell

Siri Paulson

KD Sarge

Erin Zarro

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed within are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

Individual stories Copyright 2012 by their individual authors.

Distributed under Turtleduck Press

http://www.turtleduckpress.com

Smashwords Edition

Ice cover image courtesy of teosaurio under a Creative Commons license with attribution. Other images courtesy of KD Sarge, Creative Commons with attribution.

All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

by Siri Paulson

The Wasteland

by Siri Paulson

Stasis

by Erin Zarro

The Hope of Spring

by KD Sarge

A Chance of Change

by Kit Campbell

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Introduction

by Siri Paulson (Editor)

Think about the seasons. The soft green leaves of spring give way to the heat and sunshine and bursting flowers of summer. When the days finally cool down, the leaves put on one last show of colour before falling, and the bare trees sleep under snow until spring returns once more. It's a cycle you can count on. Even if you don't have these four seasons where you live, you know the rhythms of nature around you, deep in your bones.

Now imagine all of that coming to a halt.

It's not that weather ceases to happen or the planet stops turning or time is frozen. It's that, whatever season your part of the world was in, it stays like that, now and forever.

That's the premise of this anthology.

Each of our authors has written a short story exploring one eternal season, a hundred years after the cycle stopped.

Siri Paulson shows us a place where all farmland has been abandoned due to drought, and explores the plight of a farmer's grandson and a rich woman trapped together in this empty landscape, in The Wasteland.

Erin Zarro imagines a world where virtual reality compensates for the lack of seasonal change, and maybe fills a more personal sort of emptiness as well, in Stasis.

KD Sarge gives us a small tribe whose chief is desperately trying to find ways for them to survive in the shadow of a glacier, in The Hope of Spring.

Kit Campbell asks how a scientist would approach the problem of being trapped in eternal spring, and wonders who might not want that problem solved, in A Chance of Change.

We hope you enjoy the offerings in Seasons Eternal, no matter what season you find yourself in.

The Wasteland

by Siri Paulson

Emelina sips her breakfast tea and watches the sun rise over the wasteland. The airship has sailed a day and a night since leaving the city, buffeted by a dust storm overnight that blew them off course, but the terrain has changed little. She can see the marks of former habitation, the blurred edges of what were once fields, the tumbledown structures half-hidden in dead trees. There is a desolate beauty in these abandoned places. Small wonder her artistic friends rave about painting or daguerreotyping them. She has never been much interested, is crossing the wasteland now only out of necessity.

Once, these lands thrived with green. Hard to believe now, looking at the vast stretches of dust and bare ground. The desolation stretches to the dry brown mountains and likely beyond, though no-one has crossed that way in living memory. Her great-great-grandmother's diary tells of the mountains white with frozen water and rivers churning with free water, but Emelina can hardly credit it despite her history lessons. It is too remote.

The airship skims lower over the cracked earth. Skeletons dot the ground; cows, she hopes. A house, outbuildings, all collapsed. The remnants of a wagon in the yard – perhaps not cows, then. If they had fled to the city, they would only have ended up as dusties in the slums, so perhaps it is for the best.

The ship's alarm bells go off, the ground rushes up to meet the ship, and suddenly history is not remote at all.

Tomas is washing the lady's breakfast dishes when the airship tilts nose-down and the alarms begin to ring. He scrambles across the tiny galley to his crash seat, thinking, Megs is going to kill me if I die on my first airship job. Everything in the room slides to the front wall and Tomas lands in a heap of pots and pans. There is a horrible screeching noise, and then all is still.

He unearths the door to the lounge and pulls it upwards and open. The lady is struggling up from a pile of furniture, hampered by her full skirts. Madam, are you well? he calls down to her.

Quite well, thank you. She shakes out her skirts, looking around as if dazed. Her head jerks to the side as she catches sight of something beyond the windows. Goodness, the pilot!

Watch your head, I'm coming down, Tomas says. She steps to the side. He lets himself down to hang from the frame of the galley door, then drops to land beside her. Now he can see through the windows himself. The ground is almost level with his head, which means...

The lady is already on her knees, tugging at the door to the pilot's compartment.

Tomas swallows, hesitating to tell her what to do. Begging your pardon, madam, but maybe you'd best move back.

She stares at him for a moment, but steps back, and he pries at the door. The frame is warped, but it comes loose at last and he goes sprawling. She leans over and looks in before he can warn her. Tomas pushes himself up in time to see the lady put her hands over her mouth, eyes wide. It tells him all he needs to know.

Not pretty, is it?

The worst part is, you'll have to go in there. I must have the portable telegraph.

Tomas steels himself and looks in. The pilot's head is at a crazy angle. Poor guy. He pokes around gingerly. Would the flares do? he asks, pulling one out.

Take those as well, the lady says, eyes averted. But it's the telegraph I need. I must be able to call for help, or I am doomed.

Tomas thinks of Megs. She's the whole reason he has taken this job over something safer – so he can move out of the bunk he rents with Andreo and Matteo. Once he and Megs have their own bunk, they can finally start a family. But now...he doesn't suppose she'll ever know what happened to him. The wasteland is too enormous.

He only vaguely remembers what a portable telegraph looks like, but he dives in and begins a frantic search. Since everything in the compartment is crushed, the search takes a while. When at last he finds it, it's smashed to pieces. But she's educated and all, so surely... He pulls it out of the compartment. The lady takes one look and shakes her head, and he feels