The sun rose over the dark sea and as she did every sunrise, she stood just where the tide met the earth and allowed its swells to wash over her feet. The cold of it shot through her like lightning and she wrapped herself in her overlarge sweater – made overlarge under the old maxim, ‘she’ll grow into it’ – and stared with eyes so open that it almost hurt.
The day would be followed by work, work, work, followed by what little time with the books she could eke out before the light faded again. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner would consist of bread and fish. Everyone would be tired throughout. But always, if she just woke a little earlier than everyone else, she could have this bit of time that was all hers, where she could see the world turn from dead to living.
Then, once the sun was well and thoroughly up, she set immediately from home. They’d be getting up and work, work, work would start anew.
When she came back this time, however, they were not awake.
~
No one from the provinces came to Belsworth Factory because they wanted to. Built in the northernmost reaches of the Vesperia Territory, clinging to the cliffs alongside the Termina Sea, it struck the ‘provincials’ as these: cold, dark, remote, and desolate. They did not come for fortune, for there was none to be had. They did not come for glory or adventure – those types were weeded out before they could venture any further west than Rochilda.
They came because they had nowhere else to go, neither friends nor kin to object to their leaving, a professional attitude, and a special talent for killing things. All of this described Trillium Annsdottir. And yet, when the fall of her boots brought her close enough to Belsworth Factory’s stoutly built gate that she could touch it, she could feel her bones go cold.
A poet once said that “the northern lights have seen queer sights” and Trillium could well believe that they saw them while keeping watch over Belsworth Factory.
The marshal, Shipwright, gently shoved her to the side and back before craning her neck and shouting, “Hello, up there!”
Not that the two guards needed to have their attention drawn to seven souls below, having had their bayonets trained on them since the moment they could first hear them blundering out from the forest’s path. “Who’s this, then? State your name and business.”
Shipwright tutted under her breath and, much more loudly, said, “Marshal Elodie Shipwright, bringing in a gaggle of recruits from various and sundry points southeast. We request entrance and an immediate audience with Factor Dale Elshern, or whoever has replaced him in the position if he has departed from it.”
One of the guards – a lad of about a quarter of a century with a face that was a mess of freckles and scars – leaned over and squinted at Shipwright through the shadow cast by his cap. He hmmed. “Well, it’s you all right. I guess we ought to let you in, then. Come on, Tolly, let’s get to it...” After some sounds of scrambling and the grind of metal, the gate was pulled open. The insides weren’t any more promising than the outsides, although admittedly par with what Trillium had grown up with. Chances were she’d be fed better anyway.
They marched two abreast through the gate, as per Shipwright’s prior instructions – as for her, she took the lead, taking them directly to the small central building. Some men and women watched their procession with a sort of bored interest before returning to their tasks at hand, such as tending to the garden or washing or preparing something organic and foul over an open pit.
She exchanged glances with Clay, on her right, who seemed just as enthusiastic as she was. He was about to open his mouth to speak before he remembered himself and shut it again.
Shipwright knocked on the door before letting herself in. Five minutes passed before she returned to motion them all to follow.
~
They lay as if sleeping, though with eyes open with some unseen horror. They did not breathe, nor did their hearts beat. This was true of her mother and father, and of her four sibs.
She thought to herself, why did they not cry out? She would have heard them if they had. She would have come running, feet bleeding with the scratching of rocks, lungs bursting with their effort. It did not occur to her that perhaps that was the reason why they did not do so.
~
Trillium hadn’t known what the factor would be like – Shipwright had responded to every question about him with an infuriating shrug – but she was certain she never thought he’d be like Dale Elshern turned out to be.
He was a middle-aged man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, sad and regal. The closest he came to Trillium’s assorted imaginings was his manner of dress and grooming, which was practical and immaculate. A frontier post suggested someone who kept order with the manner of a martinet or a boisterous sort who didn’t much bother with discipline at all. Elshern was neither, reminding Trillium of nothing so much as her kindly, departed grandfather. Provided her grandfather was of a much higher social class and much better spoken, that is.
Elshern bowed his head towards the newcomers, pushing his spectacles back upon his nose as his head came back up. “I am gladdened that you have all arrived safely,” he said in a classical Spiran accent. “My name is Dale Elshern and I am the factor here. During the length of your stay, which will hopefully be the entire length of your contract, you will be expected to abide by the rules and regulations of the Ultima Thule Company and the special ones specific to Belsworth Factory. Copies of the latter will be made available to you, as will the former provided you have lost your previous copy during the course of your journey.”
Then he did something which astonished Trillium: he shook every one of the recruits by hand, firmly. “I cannot begin to describe my gratitude that you have chosen to carry out this treacherous undertaking. You have done a great service to Norland by this act and I wish the best of luck to you all. Nevertheless, I am honour bound to say this: if you have any hesitation or reluctance to carry out your duties here or desire to break with the previously agreed upon contract, please state so now so that I might release you from it.”
To a soul, the recruits refused to. They had come too far and they were too much like Trillium.
~
Not long later – they had arrived late, the sun was setting down, and the grand tour had to wait for the morrow – the six of them sat in the mess hall, devouring their soup and bread with an unseemly haste. But who could blame them? It was the first time in two months, with some notable exceptions, where their meal did not consist of pemmican with an extra helping of pemmican. Fresh and cooked meat and vegetables! Cooked competently, no less, and not a slapdash job at the end of hours and hours of canoeing or hiking! They made themselves as pigs at the trough.
Conversation was created, when it was recalled the necessity of breathing. “We’re here,” said Jordan with a sort of tone that almost put everyone off their soup.
“Why’d you go and remind us of that, eh?” said Thins, scowling. Jordan shrugged and the others, as one, privately thought to themselves that Shipwright had been too much of an influence on the man.
Genton licked the soup off her lips. “It needs to be said, though. And it’s going to be sooner than later before we see... one of them.” But still, they kept eating, for all of them came from the sort of lives that dictated you ate a meal when you got it.
“Yeah, you’re right enough. I hope it’s a later sort of sooner, though.”
“Hear, hear,” said Clay. He was he only one in their little band that had ever seen them in person before. No one knew the circumstances of it, not even Trillium. Maybe Shipwright did. Sometimes, when he woke with nightmares, she would whisper some unknown something in his ear and he would settle down, enough to regain his wits.
“I heard they eat the ones they grab a hold of. While they’re still alive.” Thins shivered. Clay didn’t contradict him.
Greenmountain said nothing, but then, she never did.
~
They sent her to live with her grandfather afterwards, after the bodies had been cast into the sea and there was no more to be said to them. Like them, grandfather worked, worked, worked and expected her to do so as well, but he smiled at her and played the fiddle for her and told her how strong she was becoming.
But storms happen and they especially happen to fishers and that is when her grandfather was lamed. Oh, she worked all the harder for him then, but still he tried to do so himself and he tried enough to kill himself and so it goes.
There was nowhere else to go then, with no orphanage opening its doors to her or elderly spinsters or bachelors eager to adopt her in exchange for an extra set of hands. Westwards she went, with the one skill she had learned in a life of odd jobs that was wanted anywhere: she could hunt and she could do it well. Even when the fear came.
~
There was a howling from somewhere which was certainly not from any wolf or coyote and a scratching noise. Trillium was up and out of her bunk with a start, as was everyone else.
This included Shipwright, already fully dressed provided she was ever undressed at all. “Yes, that is what you think it is,” she said as a matter-of-factly. “Get yourselves decent; you’re not getting any slack just because it’s your first night here.”
Within the space of a minute, they were all ready – Trillium, Genton, Clay, Thins, Jordan and Greenmountain. They followed Shipwright out again, like so much lambs or chicks.
~
Trillium was told that those things were once human and she couldn’t disagree with them. That’s what made her stomach turn so fiercely. Nevertheless, as she stared down from the palisade at it, she found that she could not turn away, not even to vomit.
It was man-shaped, certainly, travelling on two legs, with two arms clawing, clawing at the gate. Its hair hung in lank, colourless clumps from its scalp; its eyes appeared like nothing more than two pinpoints of light in the dark. Tracks of its papery, corpse pale skin had been torn off – clawed off? – exposing the bone and jerky-like muscle beneath. She’d been told that things increased in size with every feeding, so that they would never again feel their stomach sated – this one was twice the size of a grown man of average height, with genitals shrunk and shrivelled between its legs.
It howled and moaned at them all, thrashing and wailing at the gate with such ferocity and speed. If one listened closely, they could pick out something resembling words from the moans and if they spoke the right language, they could understand what it was saying.
“It’s saying, ‘feed me, feed me, oh, just give me something to eat, please,’” said a native woman standing beside Trillium. She had not noticed her before, and she regarded the scene before her with an almost blasé expression. On the side of her head turned to Trillium, there was a hole where her ear had been, as if it had been chewed off. “’Mercy, please.’”
The choice came to all the recruits then to let their hearts break or harden.
Trillium remembered the bodies of the sunrise and all the hardships of the road – how Clay would wake in cold sweats and the way Shipwright would breathe the beer and wine whenever they passed through a settlement – and her heart decided what to do. She took aim at the wendigo’s head with her bayonet and fired.
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