Sparks in the Rain

Written by M.J. Weisen
Artwork: Bird Spirit Land by Barbara Gross

A clustered mess of low-orbiting satellites littered the scar-tissue sky above the wastelands. The metallic debris would sometimes collide with each other, igniting bursts of flame. It would be then that Daizel and her younger brother Dewroot would ask their parents, "Is that what took our powers?"

"No. It's just the leftovers of the Human's star machines," Essa, Mama, would say, and leave it at that.

Yet Tazelm, Papa, would ramble and say, "Well, yes, and no. It's part of how they destroyed our Terra, Aque, and Aira. They mutated Fyris to create war after war until none of the world was left but ash and rotted iron. They even littered the heavens with their mechanizations. Then, they couldn't control it anymore, and it all just combusted. That’s when the Fae crumpled into what we are now. Hopeless, powerless vagrants."

He'd then ball his moss-gloved hands into fists and shake in such anger that what magic he had left radiated through his tattered rag cloak in a faded, violet steam.

The two children weren't sure which answer they preferred.

From the time the caravan had escaped the burning forests, the number of refugee Fae went from over four hundred to about eighty. They had traveled nearly three hundred miles, but most of that was done in the first few months when they still had their allied deer, wolves, and bobcats to help. It was also done before the Terra went mad with radiation poisoning, and the Fae could plead to it for help, and the hills and ravines would flatten to make the terrain more tolerable. Yet above all, the trees could guide them and tell them about the sanctuary of Kor.

Tazelm was the only one left with the ability to speak to the trees, a skill more valuable than diamonds, according to the Fae. All refugees looked to him to move forward. He was the key to obtaining guidance from spruce, birch, and oak. He found nightly shelter from mangrove and evergreen. He found resources from fruiting tree and maple.

Yet the trees were not exempt from the pestilence that poisoned the world, and with their withering came a propounding silence for Tazelm. He had tried tree after tree for guidance, but they became quieter daily. Soon, hardly any trees remained alive. It drove enough fear to make his gut twist and head flounder, and his inner self seethed. 

After twelve days of a frantic search for surviving trees and finding no clear direction or food for the Fae, it was then that the sun blazed down on them without reprieve. All eighty refugees, which would be seventy-seven by the end of that day, stood in a dried basin of red, unforgiving clay, and before them lay five unclear paths dug into the earth.

The Elders watched Tazelm with looks of concern and pain. Their order of decision-makers had dwindled to three leftovers from the highest-ranking Fae families as if rank and status mattered anymore. The children cried with a hoarse, primal cry of hunger. Tazelm felt Dewroot and Daizel looking at him most of all, and Essa diverted her gaze to not add to his burden. He wanted to bury himself in the corpse-like soil.

Before him stood a bare, gnarled willow, the only tree he could find. The Elders had always told him to be wary of a willow's words, but at this point, desperation, not wisdom, drove him. He felt a madness snake into his mind.

He almost screamed at the intensity of his concentration, a pain searing from his whole body. Then, he felt a spark.

"Please, wise willow," he mentally said. "Guide me to the sanctuary of Kor."

He envisioned sending the question from his mind, through his arm, and into the willow's roots.

"You," a slurred, suffering voice said back. "Aren't ready for the truth."

"Please," Tazelm said. "We have nothing. We need to know what's ahead."

In the early days of their exodus, he saw visions of illuminated paths through dying forests and mangled Human cities, across tempest-stricken Aque, and finally through unforgiving tundra, where Kor waited. Now, he saw a melted, mangled mess where the arctic-nestled paradise should’ve been. Aque saturated the land, as did the Humans' rockets and bombs.

"No," Tazelm said. "It can't be."

"You'll only find embers, Faefolk. There's nothing left," the willow said and did not speak again. 

Tazelm fell forward on his knees, scales from his dragonfly-like wings shedding onto the dying soil. He couldn't comprehend that it was all for nothing, that they'd been better off letting the flames of the forests consume them at the beginning. Once he could stop heaving, he stood up, looked at the watching crowd, and nodded.

"Follow me," he said with a quivering breath and began walking.

As the night cooled, the burning Terra and the survivors mourned their dead, and Tazelm sat under the cataracted stars. He watched his sleeping wife and children and felt like he was about to implode. From a tattered bag, he pulled out a bright blue gem. He held onto it, meditated, and found a crisp and dark clearing where his subconscious waited.

"We say nothing to them," Tazelm said. "Not to the Elders, not to anyone. The willow was lying. We'll find another tree to guide us."

"The willow wasn't lying. We're walking to nowhere," his subconscious said.

"It can't be. We have to keep going. There has to be hope. We'll find the way," Tazelm said.

"And until then? Until we find actual guidance?" his subconscious said.

He could hear the cries of younger versions of himself—his fears howling in the catacombs of his recessed mind.

"We follow our instincts. We look for guides," he said.

"So, we fake it," his subconscious said.

"I didn't say that. We must follow where we think it's all leading us."

Silence and a wave of shame and coldness fell over him.

"Do we tell Essa?" the subconscious said.

"Absolutely not," he said. “We endure this alone.”

Dewroot and Daizel had their theories on what happened to Papa since he talked to that willow almost two years ago. Daizel thought he was sick. She asked the mage Fae for a remedy, but there were no herbs with which to craft. Dewroot figured they must've done something to anger him. Mama calmed their minds by explaining that the pressure to save the people made Papa cold and removed and short. That he still loved them. Yet none of them were sure of that, not even Essa.

 Essa watched the man whose lifeforce often outshined the entirety of their community fall into an aimless, dizzying spiral. He had dilapidated from an energetic, caring father and husband into an introverted shell. Essa had suspected right away that Tazelm had lost his connection with Terra's flora, but she kept quiet and steadfast. She came to him in the night asking if he wanted to talk, but he’d lay in silence, staring into nothing, lips tight.

It was the children who kept Essa going. Their enduring, never-quenching questions. 

Why are there no more trees? 

What happened to the animals? 

Why are they always hungry? 

Why don't their wings work? 

Where are they going?

What are the Ashen?

At one point, the Fae traversed what was once a highway, yet now the ground under their leaf-wrapped feet looked like consumed charcoal. Essa and others that were once designated healers knelt over the Fae Fernull as he lay on the burnt terrain. He convulsed and choked on what spit he had left as his once-seafoam skin dilapidated to the same color and deadness as the ground. His wings combusted like pine. What remained of Fernull's body shifted to soot.

"Join the spirit of Terra, Fernull of the Aeonafris Valley," Essa said, holding onto tradition like a fraying rope. "Now, healers, we know what's next. To arms."

They winced as they conjured balls of energy in their hands and stood guard over the ash. Essa groaned at the flickering orb in her hands. The less nature that surrounded her, the more painful it was to summon her power. 

Then, the ash that was once Fernull writhed and convulsed. It screamed as if hot metal pierced its core. It then flew toward a nearby Fae, picked her up, and slammed her onto the ground. Ash swept over the flailing Fae's body, adding another of these Ashen wraiths in the air. The Fae shot power at the frenzied phantoms, who dodged the attacks like the long-extinct squirrels. They added two more of the Fae to their numbers.

Thunder rumbled above the fight. Lightning snaked through black clouds. As most of the caravan ran northward, Essa saw Tazelm watching, numb as stone, as their two children held onto his legs and screamed. 

Essa grimaced at her husband’s apathy, then returned to the battle until the Ashen fled into the sky of pot-bellied clouds, which finally sent a deluge of rain. The storm wouldn't stop for months.

Fae prayed for a death other than joining the Ashen, but the Elders and children alike would suffer this fate. Whatever caused it would plague the survivors, and those left would lose more hope with each death. They all blamed the Humans. Theories ranged from the Ashen’s source originating from radiation residual to the Humans having been Demons in disguise, who had long hunted the Fae.

Dewroot and Daizel's minds swarmed with these ideas when they passed a Human city. A massive concrete wall surrounded the metropolis, adorned with barbed wire and orb-like drones that scanned the outside country with cameras. Sounds of sirens and screaming emanated from inside the city. The constant rain created a moat around the walls. 

A spray-painted message on the wall said, "Quarantine Zone: 43.6532° N, 79.3832° W. Do not enter."

"What were the Humans like before the wars?" Daizel asked Essa as she clung to her mother.

Essa looked to the wall. Her eyes seemed to travel in time, and she smiled at what she found.

"When I was about your age, I often flew through a deserted field. There, a Human girl came to play with dolls by herself every afternoon. She fascinated me. One day, I snuck so close without realizing it, that I swore that she could see me. She stared right at the grass I hid behind and giggled. Then, she simply returned to her dolls. As if I was just a bird or butterfly passing. It's because of her that I can't hate them. Even now." She paused and shrugged away a chill. "I wonder what happened to her."

The drones scanned where the Fae passed — lidless, ever-watching machines.

"Can they see us?" Dewroot asked Essa, his voice unable to speak above the deluge of the rain.

"No. Even if they tried, even if they begged to, they couldn't. Not now. And especially not with their machines. The only thing they could see now would be sparks in the rain."

"They're blind. They were always blind. And now we're lost in the Hell they made," Tazelm said, several paces in front of them, seeking the flooding ground for any tree that could offer guidance. He found nothing. Daizel looked at her father with a shifting wonder that encroached fear and looked toward the city.

It didn't stop raining until a month later when Tazelm attempted to lead the Fae northeast. The ground shifted from parched rock to gray sand. Lurching nausea overcame him. Dewroot, who had been literally following in his father's footsteps, caught up and gulped, seeing his father's face drowning with fear. 

"What's wrong, Papa?" Dewroot said. 

Tazelm shrugged yet did not speak.

"Papa, what is it?" the boy persisted. 

"Shut it!" Tazelm snapped. 

Dewroot shrank into himself and wept.

"Tazelm. You're crossing a line," Essa said from behind, holding Daizel's hand.

The father winced, feeling the justice in Essa's words, and shame overcame him.

"It's just," he said, shrinking. "The Great Ocean should be here. It’s gone."

It was then that they saw, out in the barren expanse that they walked alongside, a slew of Ashen circling some black beast whose tentacles flailed in the sickly air. Its distant shriek called out to ancestral Leviathans, who were blessed enough to pass before this end came.

That night, the Fae set up camp in the ruins of a battlefield. Bombshells and burnt bones lay amongst stick-strewn Fae baby carriages. They had to bury four more before the dark came.

Tazelm sat in the darkness, drowning into himself. He had finally given up trying to find trees with which to communicate. A cold, empty despair overcame him.

"Okay," Essa said while approaching him, causing him to jump. "I let you have your brooding. Now, you're going to let me in."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Essa," Tazelm said, turning away.

"Why didn't you tell me the willow said there’s nothing left?" Essa said.

Tazelm's face went white and his jaw dropped.

"How did you know?" he said.

She shook her head, tears cresting. "You're not hard to read."

He sat, smoldering in his shame and something else, too weak to be called anger, too hostile to be penitence.

"I'm losing you," she said. "Why?"

"There's nothing left of me, Essa. I'm just a husk leading you all to your death. You'll all either starve or turn into Ashen. And it'll be on me," Tazelm said. And it was then that his callousness and sick overflowed behind the dam he built, and he burst into tears.  

Essa held onto Tazelm as he sobbed and crumbled. It was then that the two children screamed out in the distance. The parents sprinted toward the cries, and they met the children out in the clearing before the cold wreckage of two charred airplanes. Daizel held up a fist and Dewroot flapped his hands in excitement.

"Look!" they said in unison. 

The girl opened her hand to reveal an ash-covered acorn. Tazelm gasped and looked at Essa, who smiled and nodded.

"Maybe there's some life left after all," she said.

Tazelm knelt down and brushed his finger across the rough surface of the acorn. At first, it was like looking into a dark, empty cave. No life, no hope. He wanted to give up, but this time, something unknown drove him forward. After a few moments, he finally felt the pulse of a presence. The smallest green light possible blipped in the void.

"Please," Tazelm said. "Show me the way."

The light faded in and out, barely there at all. Finally, it moved.

“Come on, Papa, let's follow it!” the children’s voices said in the void. 

The sound of quick footsteps echoed.

“How are you in here with me?” he said. “I thought I was alone.”

They only giggled in reply. And his heart exploded with the hope of tomorrow for the first time in a long, long time.