Pilgrimage
A standalone sci-fi short story
Here’s another flash fiction story, again inspired by the Flash Fiction Friday prompts from Scoot! This week the prompts were:
Write about a pilgrimage
coin moon
“is it over?”
A character that no one else can see
I’ve used maybe two-and-a-half of these this time, writing without a particular plan and without a lot of editing. The “pilgrimage” idea also drew from Jim Stump and some of his thoughts on walking which were in my mind recently, as well as conversations about how cool it would be to do the Camino de Santiago someday. Enjoy!
Martina was working her way down the long sliding slope of a steep and sunburnt coral-studded glen when the thirty-seventh drone passed her. She knew it was the thirty-seventh, because she’d been counting ever since leaving Notre-Dame-des-Arbres, even though Father Calvin had told her not to. Ignore them, he’d said. What are they to you? You must follow the path of your own pilgrimage. This one chewed its way past on six all-terrain wheels and left a thin trail of dust hanging in the hot air above the hard red earth of the path. Martina shook her head and chose not to shake her fist at the machine. A razorlike word swelled in her throat like a sword and she swallowed it. Fakers.
Halfway down the valley, Martina sat on a boulder in the shade of a tall fractal coral by the side of the path. There was a hard sharp sliver inside her left boot, piercing the ball of her foot. She untied the hard knot of the laces and unlaced the boot down to the curve of her ankle then shucked her foot out. The sock was wrinkled and damp with sweat and smelt of lanolin and undergrowth. On the underside of her foot, she found a thorn-tick piercing through the wool with its head buried in her skin. Martina scowled again towards the drone, now well beyond her near where a thin river carved the bottom of the valley into a deep gorge. The proxy pilgrims had no need to worry about ticks and leeches on the path. Martina peeled off the sock. Her foot was blistered and callused from the six days of walking since Notre-Dame-des-Arbres. The removal of the sock left the thorn-tick standing in the ball of her foot like a dart in a dartboard. The area around its head was purplish and tough like orange peel.
From the front pocket of her rucksack Martina took a pair of tweezers and a thumb-sized bottle of citric acid. This was the third thorn-tick she’d had to remove since beginning her pilgrimage. This time, it came out clean on the first attempt, so that when she squeezed its thin crystalline body with the tweezers it snapped bloodlessly. Martina said a prayer of gratitude and rubbed antihistamine cream on the bite.
It was almost noon. Martina sat a while longer on the rock, looking down into the gully and across to the other side. Some six miles of leopard-spotted desert beyond was Chapelle-Saint-Olaf. She would rest there tonight and talk with the Father and such true pilgrims as were there. From Saint-Olaf, another week would take her slowly up into the foothills and the cool-cloistered Abbaye de la Réforme and journey’s end.
A grinding and spitting on the path above her told Martina of another drone. It paused in its passing. Some of them did that. Its user’s avatar flickered above the drone’s camera and bowed to her. It said nothing, from which Martina adduced the user was following a vow of silence. Martina nodded back and reluctantly made the sign of peace. The drone moved on down the valley and disappeared into a grove of corals. The hard grey shell of the drone had the pennants of Saint Cuthbert and Saint Brendan attached to it and they fluttered blue and green behind it in the orange landscape. Martina told herself that she would one day walk the Way of Cuthbert and sail the Voyage of Brendan herself, without cheating.
She sat a while longer and ate her bread-and-cheese and drank some warm water. It was pleasant in the shade of the great trunk behind her. The thin sound of the stream seeped up from the ravine and tangled into the whine of nameless insects that swarmed in the pores of the coral. High above the valley a great kite rode the thermals, its wings dark against the pale violet sky. Beyond the kite, almost invisible, the opalescent sheen of iris clouds promised more days of dry heat and beyond the gauzy clouds the shilling face of the coin moon hung hard and bright.
Martina brought the words of the day’s psalm, the hundred-and-twenty-first, to mind as she picked her way on down the path into the gully. The moon by night thee shall not smite nor yet the sun by day. Father Calvin had asked her to meditate on the words as she walked. She was glad when the path slipped out of the high sunshine and into the shade of the coral grove. The ancient corals fanned high above her and cast thick nets of shadow and in the shadow hummed the millions of creatures that lived inside the huge calcareous organisms. There was a smell of mushrooms.
After the grove, the path descended sharply by a long flight of steps worn smooth by centuries of pilgrims’ feet. A more recent cementwork ramp to the side of the steps made it easier for the wheeled drones. Martina knew there were one-hundred-and-seventy-six steps, one for each verse of the hundred-and-nineteenth psalm. She tried to recall the verses as she eased down each step, leaning hard on her staff. Most steps were higher than was comfortable to take in a natural rhythm. The words from one-hundred-and-twenty-one kept interfering. The moon by night thee shall not smite nor yet the sun by day. Thy foot he’ll not let slide nor will he slumber that thee keeps.
The gradient of the staircase eased and the path turned along the side of the ravine some twenty feet above the fast and narrow river that even in the dry season poured down the gorge in a series of white-haired falls, and twenty feet below the mouth of the gorge. The air was blessedly cool and misted with spray that spat up from the water. The spray had slicked the red dust of the path into a sticky mud and slimed the smooth limestone of the last few steps. Martina trod on the last step of the staircase and her left foot gave way. She felt or heard the crack of bone on stone and the slap of air leaving her lungs and then the singing of angels or devils in her ear.
She was not unconscious for more than a minute. She opened her eyes and saw the shimmering sky above her and the black shape of the kite still high above the ravine. She was lying with her head on the last step and her body slack and heavy on the red mud of the path. There was a high-pitched thrumming noise beyond the keening of the insects and the churning of the water but there was a pain in her right leg that wrenched her hearing from the warm enveloping air like a tooth half-extracted from a gum. Martina pushed herself onto one elbow and saw that her leg was broken.
She dragged herself into a sitting position against the railing that kept pilgrims from falling into the ravine. There was an emergency beacon in her rucksack. She got the bag open and dug through her spare clothes and sleeping bag and meal packs to find it. Her fingers closed around the tough plastic and pulled it from the bottom of the rucksack, but she pulled with too much force and her hand was slippery and when it came free from the jumble of clothes she lost her grip. The beacon fell behind her and bounced from the railing into the water below.
Thy foot he’ll not let slide. Martina recalled the words and spat a silent imprecation on herself and on the psalmist. She took her small first-aid kit from the front pocket of the rucksack, where the distress beacon should have been, and found painkillers. She drank a little water. Her hands were shaking. She took a bag of gummy bears from her snack supply and forced herself to eat them. Another pilgrim would pass sooner or later.
The thrum in the air grew louder, and Martina knew suddenly that it was coming from outside herself. She looked up and saw a drone, flying, descending towards her. A blue pennant and a green one fluttered from its shell as it landed on the red path in front of her.
“Are you alright?” The drone user’s voice came through its tinny speakers and then a lithe and muscled avatar appeared. “No, stupid question, sorry. Have you called for help?”
“My beacon fell. Down there.” Martina pointed behind her with her thumb.
“I’m sending a distress call now.” The avatar disappeared and reappeared a couple of minutes later. “Mountain rescue are on the way. They say they’ll be here in about an hour.”
“Thank you.” It was hard to put the words together, though the drugs were beginning to lick at the edges of the pain. Martina sipped a little more water.
“I’m going to stay right here with you until they arrive.”
Martina shook her head. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll be fine.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“You have your pilgrimage to get to.” Without planning to, she put as much scorn as she could into pilgrimage.
“I’d rather be known for being the Samaritan than the priest or the Levite, wouldn’t you? And anyway, it’s my distress call they’re tracking.” The avatar was too small and its resolution too low to show much facial expression, but Martina thought it was smiling. It enraged her, although she was grateful for her rescue.
“How did you see me?”
“I was just up the other side when I heard your scream. Telescopic vision on this. When I looked for you, I saw what had happened. Changed to flight mode and got here as quick as I could.”
“Thank you.”
“Anytime. I’m Martin, by the way.”
Martina smiled despite herself. “Martina. Funny, isn’t it?”
The avatar chuckled. “That is funny.”
Martina pointed at the drone’s back. “How’d you do those pilgrimages? Same way?”
The avatar froze and Martina thought it had lost connection with the user. Then it blinked out and re-appeared in a different skin. A thin young man in a nest of hospital tubes. His face was sad or angry and when he spoke his mouth did not move under its mask. Martina saw the box of a thought processor at his temple.
“You think your pilgrimage is more valid than mine because I’m not getting my feet dirty.”
Martina looked at the avatar’s hazy eyes then at the red mud beneath the drone’s wheels and at her own broken body.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!
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Excellent!