Maps of Broken Places

By Andrew Knighton

A clockwork city winding down into entropy. A forest where moving statues stand sentry over the dead. A post-apocalyptic garbage heap.

Visit all these places and more in fifty-two short stories set in worlds beyond our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Knighton
• Release date: Dec 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393868354

Andrew Knighton

Andrew Knighton is a freelance writer and an author of science fiction, fantasy, and steampunk stories. He lives in Yorkshire with his cat, his computer, and a big pile of books.

Book preview

A Shrine to Rot

––––––––

The land had grown hard and dry, nothing stirring but dust in the wind. The only place where nature held was in the waste heap outside the village, where beetles and worms ate what people could not. Oxen stood gaunt at idle ploughs while seeds lay lifeless in the soil.

And so Cobark gathered her people and led them into the desert, carrying all that they needed to start again - their clothes, their tools, their blankets, and the last of their food.

They walked north for five days, into an ever fresher wind. The air became cool and damp and their flagging spirits rose.

They reached the coast and looked out across a salt sea that shimmered with the sheen of black oil. Nothing could live here except the birds that fed on rotting fish, and the people could walk no further.

So Cobark led them east, across the desert once more. They walked for five days, their steps growing slower and more weary, until they reached a city from the days before the flattening.

In its ruins they found metal boxes with no opening, and when they broke into them some held precious food. But the first to eat from them became sick and twitched with a terrible fever. As they struggled to save him, monsters emerged from the city, some walking on two legs and some on four, all hungry for the people's flesh. They fought them off and ran south, with the oxen in a long trail behind them.

After five days, with mountains rising to the east, they came to a canyon. It was as though a giant had taken an axe to the ground, leaving a deep gash where the earth had been. Desperate as they were, they could not cross it, nor could they climb the mountains.

And so, with a weary heart, Cobark pointed west. She let the others walk before her, for she was no leader any more. She had brought them forth and all they had found was misery, different places to die from hunger. She took the rear of the travelling column, and whenever someone fell she would lift them up and carry them until they had the strength to go on. When more fell than she could carry, she laid them on the backs of the oxen or made stretchers on which they could be dragged. Soon, half the people were taking the weight of the other half as they processed home to die.

In this way, it took them ten days to come back to the village. Most returned to their huts to wait for the end. But Cobark felt her failure. She did not deserve such comfort. So she walked out of the village and went to die by the waste heap, where she knew she belonged.

There she saw life. Seeds sprouting from the rotten pieces that people had thrown away. Cobark found hope, for herself and for her village.

She cracked open the hard soil and dug in the rotting waste. Within days the seeds, which had seemed set to lie dormant forever, began to sprout. The people rejoiced. Cobark returned smiling to her home.

And every year after, at the time of planting, they went to offer thanks at the shrine that was the waste heap.

Omens of the End Times

––––––––

Shooting stars blazed across the sky, bright wounds in the skin of dusk.

Another omen! Ostelia shouted, glaring angrily at her fellow senators. The city will fall.

His body quivering with rage, Asmir hitched up his toga, rose from his seat, and pointed past her through the pillars of the temple porch.

The city will not fall because of this, he said. It will fall from our neglect. The great lake has not dried up through the will of the gods but through our inaction.

A rumble rose out of the east. A great foaming wall of water came rushing across the lake bed toward the city.

Another sign! Ostelia exclaimed. The end is upon us!

The dams have broken. Asmir swung around and grabbed a servant. Quick, ring the bells, get people to high ground.

The water surged across the dried out lake bed and crashed against the houses beyond. Buildings at the foot of the temple hill were smashed aside. Timbers and bodies spun in the current as the waters rose. One by one, the temple steps vanished beneath the flood.

The end is upon us, Ostelia declared.

Half the senators cried out in agreement. They followed her as she strode solemnly out of the temple, onto the steps, and down towards the waters.

Get back here, you fools, Asmir shouted. We'll need everyone we can get to rebuild after this.

He ran after them, sandals flapping against stone, and tried to haul them back. A brawl broke out as half the senate tried to keep the other half from drowning itself.

Ostelia reached the water's edge. It was still rising, but slower than before. She raised her hands and stepped in. The edge of her toga darkened and clung to her shins.

Take me, oh divinities. Carry me into the purer world that follows.

Asmir was about to grab hold of her when something caught his eye. A wicker basket bobbed across the water to them, carrying with it a baby's frightened cries.

Thoughts of Asmir's fellow senators fled his mind. He tore off his toga and dived into the swirling waters. Currents snatched at him, trying to drag his body this way and that, but this was one thing at which he excelled. Though he was spun around and almost sucked under, he kept his course, until at last he laid a hand on the basket.

There was a hiss. A cat popped its head up over the edge and glared at Asmir. It dug its claws into his fingers, causing a fierce flash of pain. Tail stiff and back arched, it stood protectively over a tightly swaddled infant.

I'm here to help, Asmir said, but the cat just raised its claws again.

No time to appease the savage beast - Asmir would have to take whatever punishment it gave him. As blood welled from his fingers, he turned the basket and pushed it ahead of him towards the shore.

The waters tugged at him again as he neared the temple steps. He was so close, but a current clutched him and he could feel himself being drawn away.

Then a hand reached through the last grey light of dusk. Ostelia was in the water, and other senators behind her, a chain of them clinging to each other back to dry land. Asmir grasped Ostelia with one hand and the basket with another. Battling the force of the flood, the senators dragged him to shore.

At last, Asmir sat sodden on the hillside, lit by torches the servants had brought out, the torn up timbers of the city being swept away in front of him. The cat leaned its head out of the basket and licked his fingers, cleaning the wounds it had caused. The baby gurgled, smiled, and raised a tiny pink hand.

Ostelia leaned in, her toga dripping, and the baby grabbed at her dangling hair.

It is an omen, she whispered. A sign that life will go on.

Anger flared in Asmir. Ostelia had almost died of omens, almost taken half the city's leaders with her. Now she was twisting this so she didn't have to see her own madness.

The baby laughed and something shifted inside Asmir. He might not believe in omens, but he believed in people.

It is a sign, he said. A sign of hope. A sign that we can rebuild together.

Ostelia laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled.

Together, she said.

Grave Wood

––––––––

Tohan crept into the grave wood, a basket of woven reeds strapped to his back, a thief in the most sacred of places. He hated coming here. Memories poured out of the shadows - images of Oela's body, pale and wrapped in silk; of the mourners carrying her to her grave; of the goods laid with her and the dirt tumbling after, hiding her from him forever. He had shed tears enough to fill a lagoon. Yet here he was again, set on the most wretched of tasks.

A figure loomed out of the trees, the first of the grave guardians. The statue's wooden face had been worn smooth by the centuries, the features of the woman it protected obliterated by time. Only the eyes still had colour, a green that glowed in the darkness, a reminder that there was life after the body passed.

Tohan sidestepped around the guardian's field of vision. With a creak of old wood, its head turned and he held his breath, then realised that he was standing on the grave it guarded. Another step and the movement stopped.

Tohan exhaled and walked on.

Deeper into the grave wood, his way became crowded with guardians. The oldest of the statues had been carved from living wood and the bodies they represented laid amid the roots. More recent guardians were carved in the town and brought here, to take a place wherever one could be found, to take up their eternal vigil.

He tried to tread a line between the graves, but they were packed tight together and his feet were those of a potter, not a dancer. Several times he stumbled, trod on sacred dirt, and saw the statues turn to face him. Every time, his heart raced and he quickened his step, afraid that if he stayed long enough at one grave then its guardian would turn on him.

At last he reached the place he sought. The grave was new, the paint on the guard clean and bold. Yellow skin, green eyes, black hair. Traces of gold embedded as jewellery around the neck.

There was a treasure buried here, its value beyond counting.

He knelt and drew a trowel from the basket on his back. With trembling hands, he dug into the loose dirt.

There was a creak.

The statue bowed its head to look down at Tohan.

He dug faster, using his hand as well as the trowel, casting aside great clods of earth. His chest felt tight, his muscles tense as bowstrings.

Come on, come on... he muttered as the dirt flew.

Another creak. The guard's arms swung around.

If he wanted to stay free then he should back away now, abandon his prize and the statue guarding it. But he couldn't. Not now. Not ever.

He scrabbled frantically in the dirt. A nail tore loose but he barely noticed the pain.

The guardian leaned closer. Cold yellow hands gripped Tohan's shoulders.

Robber, a rumbling voice intoned. Despoiler.

Please, Tohan mumbled, thrusting his hands deeper, feeling desperately for the thing he sought. Please, I need this.

He felt damp silk and the cold, unyielding flesh of the fresh corpse. His fingers brushed a leather cord.

Criminal, the guard intoned as it tightened its grip and pulled.

The magic of the grave wood was far stronger than Tohan. He was dragged up. He tightened his fingers around the cord, which resisted for a moment and then came.

Robber! the guard said, louder this time. Soon, people from the town would hear. They would find him, judge him, know his weakness.

Tears ran through the mud dappling Tohan's cheeks.

He held up the cord and saw the pendant hanging there, a clay model of a boat, its blue enamel chipped. The first gift he had made for Oela, one she had worn every day since, right into the grave.

Please, Tohan whimpered. I need something of hers. Some token to remember her by. Something to tell me that I'm not alone.

He looked up into that face, carved with Oela's long nose, her narrow brow, her broad smile. In place of her eyes, those shining green points, strange and yet familiar. His tears ran until they fell onto the wooden arms that gripped him so tight.

Alone, the statue said, its voice soft.

It lowered Tohan to the ground and let go. Painted hands shovelled dirt back into the grave, but made no attempt to take the pendant.

Thank you, Tohan whispered.

He stumbled back a step, one hand rubbing at his eyes, the other clutching his precious treasure. Then he turned and walked away through the grave wood.

The guards watched