A map of what comes next

Spring is the gentlest season. Tender green things push up from the reluctant earth around Travers Bays, and tender sun-starved people rush to meet them. Canals need dredging, fishmeal fertilizer needs spreading. Anyone who can lift a bucket or turn a spade is needed — everyone but Sooz, of course. The Station-keeper has her own duties, different but also important. She kisses Lalla goodbye each morning before setting out on her three-hour trek.

The people of the Glut built the Stations near the end of their reign, and — for once in their long shameful history — they made them with an eye to the future. Sooz climbs the ladder stowed below to lovingly clean the skyward-turned sun panel, which feeds the Station. Once satisfied with its well-being, she climbs down to send a few messages at the terminal, and to read one already waiting: a trade request from the Station’s nearest sister in Grayling. Sooz dutifully records the details — the numbers and directions and data she cannot remember on her own — in beetroot ink on her precious marsh-paper roll. Then she settles in to wait for nightfall.

After dark, messages stretch their way to her from farther away. Bad Ax requests help with a group of raiders. Someone in Lancing wants a better recipe for blue dye. And from Moonsing, far north across the cool blue stretches of the Great: another page of the story.

The story has gone on for nearly a year now, and there were other stories before that, dating back to Sooz’s youth. This tale details a spaceman’s exploration of a frozen-sea planet, the loss of his crewmates, the strange life he befriends undersea. The waters of another world: a lovely impossibility, a future stolen by the Glut. But how sweet to imagine! Sooz replays the story over and over, engraving into herself every nuance of the storyteller’s rough voice, marrying every line to all that has come before. A world of curiosities, but also one of love and sorrow and storms. She falls asleep imagining the glow of Lalla’s eyes as she listens, Glut-greedy for every detail.

Summer belongs to the dust storms. They blow up from the south, the dry prairie lands of Lancing. People run water from the Great and her canals to wash the plants clean, restoring to them the gift of sunlight. Like them, Sooz dons her broad-brimmed hat, the one that Lalla wove for her out of marsh reeds, and a scarf over her face to ward off the lung-scouring air. Then she sets out alone, for the Station.

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Later, when she and Lalla lie in bed, not quite touching for the heat, she will recite the whole story from its start: frozen worldscapes to swaddle themselves in, until exhaustion wrestles prickling, miserable heat into the uneasy truce of sleep.

In autumn, storms come from the north: monstrosities birthed by the Great, all of her power with none of her grace. Sometimes messages come from west across the waters, with enough warning to bring in the boats and secure them, to shutter up the houses against the wind. Sometimes they don’t. In the held breath between one storm and the next, Sooz visits the Station, sweeps away the debris of branches, records what has been left for her and sends what is awaited. Then, while the Great’s wicked children howl and scream, she huddles in her house and dreams of labyrinthine palaces where a traveller may rest, for a spell, in the embrace of alien waves.

Winter is the fallow season. The people of the Glut, long ago, slew the frost snake that trapped the frozen air in the north, and now the world suffers for it. In Travers, someone is lost, every year or two, to the driving snows, believing surely they know the way well enough to navigate safely to the barn or their neighbour’s house. Even if it were safe for Sooz to make the trip, the other Stations fall silent too, hibernating until spring. I don’t want to think about frozen oceans right now anyway, Lalla and Sooz lie to each other.

The spring thaw comes, and Stations awaken, one by one, all across the region. The old, familiar patter of trades and migrants and intruders — but no story. Any day now, Sooz promises Travers; promises Lalla. Any day. But when the thaw gives way to spring’s full flush, she messages Moonsing. What happens next? We’ve been waiting so long.

Instead of returning to Travers, she sits with her back against the Station to wait. Against her back, the Station is cool and solid. A promise from the world left behind, and an apology, too, one that must be accepted without offering forgiveness in return.

Just as the weary sun makes his way towards his rest, the terminal sings softly to signal a new message. The Great took my grandmother this year, says the reply from distant Moonsing. I’m the Station-keeper now, but the stories were hers.

Sooz walks back slowly, as dawn makes pink slush of the soft wet sky. Lalla is awake already, waiting outside the door of their cottage. At her hopeful look, Sooz touches the rolled marsh-paper at her waist: still new, not a drop of ink on it.

There’s nothing there to feel, but why should that matter? The story is engraved on her bones, a map of what comes next. The world of her dreams is as alien as the Glut, but that doesn’t set it beyond her understanding. She smiles. Is there tea, my love? I need to wet my throat before I can tell you what comes now.