The Inklings

Today is April 31. Jade sets the battered tin kettle atop the still-glowing embers. Her fingers are thin, wrinkled, useful.

The shelter creaks with the rocking of Sebastian’s rope hammock. How tender he looks, with his hands tucked beneath his face, just as he slept as a boy. Even then, his small, tan fingers covered his soft cheekbone, hiding his tattoo.

Jade’s eyes take in the sky–breathy and promising. The encampment is not yet awake; the distant machines have not yet begun their groaning.

As the loose spearmint and hyssop leaves rise, oxidize, and mingle in her can, she ponders how this day–the one she’s been anticipating for three scores–has arrived meekly.

The Half-Shaded Heart

Shored up by herbal tea and a sparing sampling of hemp seeds and dried beetroot, Jade prepares herself.

Her reflection greets her evenly, from the fractured mirror that hangs on the wooden shelter post. Smooth gray hair, deep-set eyes of dawn, skin creased like a dry riverbed, and thin yet dependable shoulders. And there, just above the threadbare collar of that sweater, deeply inked on fragile skin, is the half-shaded heart.

It was mid-winter of 2138. A breathless woman, already in labor, found the midwifery shelter. The layered and fraying tarps were bullied by the night’s stinging winds, which forced their way into the tent through small gaps and tears. The nursemaid busied herself attending to the mother, who had now entered the throes of labor.

The kerosene lamp cast flickering shadows across the aching woman who was rocking and enduring in the makeshift stretcher. In the mother’s eyes was panic–until she caught a glimpse of her nursemaid’s face. There, on the lower side of her pleasantly pink cheek, was a neatly inked dove. The mother lay her head back on the padded surface and breathed deeply.

With the first signs of morning light, a babe’s cries were heard. The nursemaid placed the wet and warm baby on the new mother. Too tired to speak, the mother simply pointed at her own wrist, where two gems were inked side-by-side. Minutes later, a second baby was born.

The morning was equally cold, but windless. The mother remained tremendously weak, hardly able to open her eyes. Her breath was increasingly delicate. “Jade,” she whispered. “Topaz,” she hushed.

The nursemaid used a pan of clean water and several cotton rags to clean the two baby girls. Both, she saw as she gently scrubbed their skin, had half-shaded hearts inked on their necks–common for twins. But one had a long life’s worth of additional markings. Whereas the other had a single white lily delicately inked on the center of her small, pale chest.

The Thyme Sprig

Jade slinks beneath Sebastian, towards her wooden crate of tools. The metal clinks together quietly as she slowly removes each item in search of her spade. She finds it, cleans it of yesterday’s dirt, and tucks it in her burlap sling bag.

The ground is coated with morning dew, she notes as she picks her way along the patchy path that winds between the shelters. The East Quarter is motionless, save for the stovepipes’ tendrils of smoke, twisting upwards. Beyond the open field of the encampment, Jade enters The City Remnants.

On its outskirts, vendors have taken over the first floors of hollowed-out high-rises: candle-makers, scrap-metal sellers, sparse stalls of grains and dried meats, tarp and fabric traders. And, of course, several mystical-looking tents with starry-eyed occupants who claim to interpret ink. “Let life unfold itself,” Jade used to caution Sebastian. On lighter days, she’d add, “Currency is best wasted on chocolate.” As if she’d ever tasted it.

She threads her way through the vestiges of skyscrapers, the sky a thin pale sliver above her. The only noise on the Westward block is her careful footsteps towards a three-story, deep gray building with its back to the harbor. She crouches beneath the shattered glass entry, past the bombed-out staircase, and towards the chute in the back corner. There, she readjusts her sling bag on her shoulder and climbs the rope ladder. The metal passage is tight, rusted, and dark.

As she pulls toward the light, her bones feel fragile, barely padded by muscle beneath thin skin. Finally, at the top, she breathes in the air that’s journeyed over the ocean and into her lungs. The deck is empty; the lounge chairs were looted years ago. At its center is a large, indented rectangle. At the bottom is a thick layer of dirt that Jade and Sebastian hauled here, bucket by bucket.

She remembers how he would perch, look out to the sea, and allow the wind to ruffle his dark curls. She remembers his boyish excitement in seeing the ships leaving the harbor. She remembers him asking questions about what was out there; questions she couldn’t answer.

She passes the cement pool, with its rows of plantings; herbs in the shallow end, root vegetables in the deep. At the end of the deck, in the smaller, sunken circular pool, sits the blooming white jasmine bush. They are the only flowers in The City Remnants. She kneels in the dirt, beneath the dew-soaked flowers’ fragrance, and begins to dig.

The spade fits naturally in her right hand, the one with the thyme sprig inked on the back. The ink spirals upward into a full sleeve of interlacing botanicals on her arm. She feels a sense of peace as she churns the soil, six, eight, ten, twelve inches deep. Tink. Her spade hits the coffee can, and she unburies it.

From it, Jade removes the 200 tightly folded currency units and tucks them into her bag. As the sun begins to appear over the jagged urban ruins in the east, she looks at her garden and quietly thanks it.

The Open Hand

Hong’s shop is lined with wooden shelves holding glass jars. Most are empty. Jade slips towards the counter.

“No haul today? Someone from the North Quarter came in looking for mint.” Hong looks at Jade behind thick glasses.

“Here to buy,” she nearly whispers.

Hong’s face lightens, “Explains why you came in the front, I guess. What can I do you for?”

“Do you have a cacao bar?”

Hong’s eyebrows raise above his frames. “Must be some special occasion! Let’s see here,” He wipes both hands on his apron. The floorboards creak as he shuffles around behind the counter. “Lucky you,” he says, placing the bar on the counter. A certain inhale and flicker in his eye makes Jade think he will ask her a question, but he seems to abandon it.

“Ten units?” She says in a question that’s really a statement.

He nods slowly. She pays him. His mouth smiles, while his eyes frown, and he says, “You take care of yourself, now.” The floorboards make no noise as she leaves.

With the sun now high in the sky, Jade navigates to the wharf. Beneath her sweater, a small, inky, open hand is marked on her bony shoulder blade. Longshoremen roll clunky wooden barrels along the weather-worn dock. A little brown dog trots past, carrying a fishbone.

At the end of the pier, a man sits lazily at the stall. He’s heavy-set, with black inked barnacles on his arms. Jade clutches her sling bag and walks towards him.

The Nested Bird

The scrappy shelters of East Quarter are bathed in amber sunlight when Jade returns home. The evening has cooled, and gnats and fireflies float outside her tent. Sebastian’s hammock hangs limp, and his boots are missing. He has gone to the factory.

Jade cleans her spade and returns it to its crate. Machinery hums in the distance. In the distressed wooden dresser, in the top drawer, Jade rummages for a writing utensil. What to say. What to say?

The memory is clear as sunlight through glass. Jade was cutting through The City Remnant and saw a boy, no taller than her hip, shuffling along a shaded alleyway. The wind exhaled in a crisp, early autumn way. She thought he was wearing socks, but realized it was only mud on petite, bare feet. Jade scanned the alley. There was only one set of small footprints.

After a slow greeting and a few minutes of gentle questioning and timid answers, the boy looked up at Jade. His face was thin and caked with mud. She sat beside him in the stone alleyway, while the sun melted into the horizon.

His voice barely squeaked, “I don’t think they’re coming back.” And, in the dusk, she saw thick tears trace down his round cheeks. With small, pudgy fists, Sebastian wiped the tears, smearing the mud. And there on his cheekbone was an inked gemstone.

And then, and only then, Jade understood the nested bird inked on her shoulder. Why she, who was beyond childbearing years, had the mark of a mother.

4.32.2203.

Jade has cautiously observed many people over the years, but not once has she seen a date inked on someone else’s skin. Only her own. She once asked the woman who raised her about it. And, gentle as a dove, she told Jade to let life unfold itself.

Now Jade knows.

Her cursive is tight. She writes directly on the brown paper that houses the cacao bar.

Sell the flowers; bring the potatoes. Enjoy the journey.

She uses frail fingertips to separate the paper from the bar’s aluminum wrapping. And she sets Sebastian’s ticket for next week’s voyage between them.