WebWorld (4.3)

 

Short answer: it was.

Of all the places for a cake stall.

But it was. It actually was.

Tristan and Greg were stopping the car, and I stopped right along behind them, trying to figure out what this anachronism from how-we-used-to-be was doing right in front of me. Worlds we have Lost: what those tattered library books used to call medieval days. Well, this felt like that.

A couple of girls with curly yellow hair waved at me as I got out of the car.

Tristan was parking just in front of me. He and Greg got out, and they both cast me kind of wtf looks as we walked over to these lines of trestle tables, all loaded with goodies and goods.

One of the girls held her hand out for one of us to shake, and after a second Greg reached out and accepted her gesture. She grinned at him. She was bubbling enthusiasm. And I noticed now that she was decidedly pregnant.

I asked her, “What is all this?”

And she answered with a perky little grin: “Commerce.”

“How?”

“How? Well, we make things, we grow things. Then we lug them out here and we trade with people who happen by.”

“Does that happen a lot?” I’d seen no other cars.

“Not much. Not yet. But word’ll get out.”

“Maybe to the wrong people,” I cautioned.

She laughed, “Oh no, we have an understanding.”

“With the gangs?”

“The warbands.”

“Is that what they’re calling themselves?”

“Some are.”

“Like this… Gonlogos?” Had I got the name right?

“Like him. Yeah. Look, we pay them off, they get a few things, we do the work, and it’s all good.”

I honestly didn’t know how to feel about this. I glanced over the table at some early vegetables, some dried fruits and meats, some apparently freshly baked cakes along with jars of what seemed to be wine, pots of honey, ice-cream containers of raw honey-comb.

Greg said, “You have bees. I used to have bees. I studied bees.”

The girl said, “Cool.”

I told her, “I’m Nate. The suave one here is Greg. And that’s Tristan.”

“Mari. Short for Marigold.”

“Like the flower?”

“Yup.”

“You’re all hippies, aren’t you?”

“Would it hurt if we were?”

I had Charles Manson vibes running about in my head. But the girl seemed genuinely friendly, and there was an air of cheer and calm about the whole group.

“Where do you come from?” Tristan asked.

She gestured with her head towards a low hill. “Just on the other side of that.”

“Commune, right?” I said.

“You could call it that. It was housing for orchard workers once. We’re going to have a lot fruit to sell in a couple of months. We can give you some good trade if you come back then.”

“What do you trade for?”

“What do you got?”

And it did seem as if they were willing to trade just about anything for anything. Almost as if this whole market was just for fun. Or a honey-trap. Luring us in. Visions: Charles Manson. Cannibals. Spider feeding frenzy. My imagination was really far too vivid not to become an apocalypse liability.

And on the subject of honey – as Greg traded his hat for a small pot of it, he was asking Marigold: “Can we buy a hive?”

She considered. “Maybe. We have a few. The orchardists would have used them to pollinate the fruit. There’s a few starter hives in one of the sheds, I guess we could see if Dune wants to part with one.”

“Dune?”

“Like he said,” she flashed me a smile, her face seemed almost moulded into permanent, unspoiled joy, “we’re a bunch of hippies. Actually, there are some gypsies in the group. Some locals. Some randos. Come on. Let’s go back. We’ll show you guys around.”

We all looked back at the cars, turning our heads in unison.

“We won’t steal them.”

“We have a lot of stuff in there,” Greg apologised.

“We have gold,” Tristan added, pleased with himself for his earlier decision. “Do you trade in gold?”

“If it’s what you have. Sure. We won’t steal your cars, but bring them along. You can check out the hives. We won’t hurt you.”

I glanced at Tristan. His glance mirrored mine. Do we? Don’t we?

I said, “Okay.”

#

Their set-up was a bit more advanced than ours, or if not advanced, at least a little more organised. There seemed to be a kiln for baking clay, rows of vegetables, barbecues and picnic tables, I saw sheep and chickens roaming amidst long grass, right beside where barefoot children were playing and shouting.

“This is a farm,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s the idea. It’s mostly orchards, but some croplands, some livestock.”

“What about the people who owned this?”

Did something change slightly in her face? “We don’t really know. They think the world’s population has probably halved. And they thought that before all the connections were lost. Some places its really bad. Who knows if any of them are alive? I mean, if they showed up… but it’s a whole other world now, isn’t it? We’ve had to adapt.”

“You’ve done a good job.”

Her face brightened again; she fell into her naturally smiling pose. “I know. I feel like we’re acing this apocalypse. But you guys…?”

“We have a place too.”

“See. We’re all trying to find a way to rebuild.” She took us into one of the many sheds, and gestured over a man who was working on some light building. He wore a green linen scarf around his neck and had rose-tinted glasses and a big, ceramic earring nestled into one elongated earlobe.

“Dune. These guys want to buy a hive.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Greg said, “just a starter hive. Marigold said you have some.”

“They want to trade gold,” Mari offered.

“Might come in handy sometime.”

Tristan negotiated, with Greg’s help, tipping a couple of gold chains and a pair of rings into Dune’s palm. Greg picked up a small wooden box, and negotiated for a larger box, and some sheets of wax wired into wooden frames. He seemed to know what he was doing, so I left it to him, and wandered out into the farmyard to watch the kids chase ducks and chickens, while butterflies danced around on sunflowers and dandelions. Bees moved around as well, adorning the speckled clover, plentiful but content, flying back and forth amongst the children without stopping to sting.

Tristan came out behind me, “What do you make of this place?”

“Not sure.”

“Have you noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“All the girls.”

“I’ve noticed them…”

“Look again.”

I scanned the crowd, while Tristan hovered at my back. It dawned on me slowly, “Most of them are pregnant.”

“Can you say psycho cult?”

“We don’t know that.”

“We don’t know it. But there’s something off. They’re like a fresh, cheery coat of paint over rotten wall-panelling. I’m not sure we should stick around.”

But Greg came bouncing out of the shed, all smiles and confidence: “Good news. We’re invited to lunch.”

#

I became increasingly aware of what Tristan had pointed out. I wondered how much of it he’d planted, how much of it was me, how much of it was them. Most are good people, I reminded myself, most people are just trying to get by from day to day. More so now than ever. And they seemed nice, they glittered with niceness, they were all hippie moonbeams and love for their fellow humans.

I wondered at what was behind that though. The uniformity of them, especially the women, with almost all in long dresses, usually floral, with long hair, often garlanded with flowers. The men seemed to keep a bit more of a distance, and I got a definite sense of being watched.

But since we were here, and since it was lunchtime, I sat down to a meal of roast meat, potatoes, some sort of grain pudding, and three different kinds of cake. The cakes were all light and moist, baked with fruits and honey. Food passed around the table, hand to hand, while a dozen or so faces smiled briefly at me, and continued their meal as if us three were nothing that odd.

Except for that feeling of concealed scrutiny that I just couldn’t shake.

“Trade for more cake, but then we should go,” Tristan decided.

I was in the process of nodding my agreement, when a dark-haired girl leaned over and touched my scaly wrist, “how long have you had this?” she asked.

“Since… a few months.”

“Itchy?”

“Sometimes.”

She considered me for a few seconds. “Do you get the dreams?”

“What do you know about the dreams?”

She held out her wrist to show a thin line of scaly, scratched-up skin.

“Oh.”

“I don’t get any of the dreams, but I’ve heard.”

I could feel the weight and heat of both Tristan and Greg looking at me with newfound curiosity – and maybe a little suspicion. “Are there… more?”

“Yeah. But it’s mostly…” and I was sure her eyes darted around the room, “… it’s Karen where it all started. She’s the one like you.”

How much like me? It seemed as if the walls had just suddenly been covered in a light layer of gum, as if it was flowing down them like treacle, seeping into the floorboards.

Rot. Tristan’s eyes seemed to be warning me. Rot beneath fresh paint.

But this was big. Or maybe it was big. It could feel the tension of hardened, scabbed flesh all up and down my arm, along my shoulder, against my back and reaching tendrils over my stomach. I looked at this girl, whose shape was beginning to show the first hints of pregnancy. “Any chance I could meet this Karen?”

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work