If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an entry from my on-going serial fiction experiment “The Archive.”
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Day 447 — Before Sunrise
The rooster doesn’t crow anymore. Someone ate him last winter, and no one admitted to it. But the dogs know dawn the way I know Demi’s breathing in the dark, and their restlessness pulls me awake before the light changes.
I dress without waking her. By now I know which floorboards sigh and which ones keep their peace. The kitchen still holds yesterday’s warmth from the cookstove. I build the fire back up, set the kettle, and go out into the gray.
The farm looks different at this hour. Not peaceful, exactly, but honest. The greenhouse plastic has held through the last windstorm. The goat pen needs mending where Atlas tested the fence again. The wards along the north boundary, the ones Demi taught me to lay with foxglove and iron nail, still hold their charge. I feel them humming against my palms when I pass close, a low note below hearing.
By the time the kettle whistles, I’ve walked the perimeter, checked the rain catchment, and found the place where the rabbits have gotten into the kale. I’m marking it for repair when Nate emerges from the barn, still buttoning his coat.
“You’re up early,” he says.
“You’re not.” I hand him the twine I brought for the gate. “The southeast latch is rusting through. We need to replace it before the next heavy rain or we’ll be chasing goats into the ravine again.”
He takes the twine, squinting at the mark I’ve made. “When did you start seeing problems before they happened?”
I don’t answer. The truth is, I’m not sure. Somewhere between the first frost and the last thaw, I stopped reacting to shit and started predicting it. The farm speaks in a language of small deteriorations, of shifts in animal behavior, of plants that grow wrong before they look wrong. I’ve learned to listen. To observe. To catch the patterns before they catch us.
Demi is at the stove when I come back in, her hair still wild from sleep, stirring something that smells of oats and the last of the dried apples. She doesn’t turn, but she says, “You checked the wards.”
“And the catchment. And Nate’s gate.”
“And you found something else.” Not a question. She knows my silences now the way she knows the properties of every plant in her drying shed.
I stand behind her, close enough to smell the sleep on her skin, the faint trace of lavender oil she works into her hands at night. “The greenhouse is too warm. Something’s off with the ventilation.”
She nods, keeps stirring. “I’ll look after breakfast.”
“I already adjusted it.”
She turns then, wooden spoon in hand, and looks at me. Really looks, the way she does when she’s trying to see past what I’m saying to what I’m feeling. I hated that look once. Now I lean into it.
“You’re different,” she says.
“I know.”
“Not just the knowledge.” She gestures vaguely with the spoon, spattering oats on the stove. “The way you hold yourself. Like you belong inside your own skin.”
“High compliments from the chef,” I say.
I think of Finn then, the way his presence has shifted over the year. He doesn’t come to me in the crushing weight of grief, or guilt, or despair anymore. He comes like weather, like the slightest pressure change before a storm, like something I can feel in my bones without being destroyed by it. He never weighed me down in life, and he sure as hell doesn’t in death. Sometimes he speaks, but more often he simply is, a presence in the room that Demi can’t see but has learned to sense through me. Yet, she has also learned to talk to him in her own way.
His love somehow drove me to this farm, even in his death. I sometimes wonder if anyone will truly understand what that means. The strength it must have taken to reach beyond time and space to rewrite the rules of what love looks like.
Demi grabs me from behind just as the kettle begins to whistle, high and thin, and outside the dogs go suddenly, completely still.
Day 447 — Morning
The radio clicks on after breakfast.
That used to mean Finn wanted something.
Demi looks up from the sink. I look toward the hall. Even Bastet goes still.
Static breathes through the room. Not the empty static of dead air - something else. Something that carries weight, intention, a voice beneath the noise. I press one hand to my stomach, where the knowing starts.
Then a woman laughs through the speaker. Bright. Ragged. Too alive to be dead and too close to death to be safe.
I know she’s not here. Miles and miles from anywhere, this farm sits alone. But I can see Mercy Hill from the ridge on clear days, and I know distance doesn’t mean what it used to. Not for me. Not anymore.
Finn says, very softly, She’s on the road.
“Who?” Demi asks.
I don’t answer. I’m listening to the static breathe, to the way the signal carries grief like a frequency, like someone broadcasting their own ending and hoping someone will hear it before it’s finished.
“I don’t know yet,” I say. “But she’s coming.”
The dogs haven’t moved. The static holds for one long moment, then releases.
Demi wipes her hands on her apron. “Mercy Hill?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. Somewhere between there and here. Somewhere on the road.” I look at the radio, still humming with whatever passed through it. “She doesn’t know we’re listening. She’s just... sending.”
“Sending what?”
I think of the laugh. The ragged edge of it. “Her aliveness,” I say. “While she still can.”
Oooooooooooh, mmmm, mmmm, mmmmm, it's so goooooooooood.