Black Locust Letters

This is a work
of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed are either products of the author's imagination or used
fictitiously.

Copyright ©
2015 by NICOLETTE JINKS

NICOLETTE JINKS
asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this
work.

You may contact the author via email:
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Independently
Published by author

doing business
as Standal Publications

393 River Road
Bliss, Idaho 83314

There are many tales of forbidden love, of fantastical
places, of mysteries and murder, of knowledge gained and innocence
lost, but they tell most of all, of things that Never
Were.

And
this? This is another such tale, and it all starts with letters
made of fluff from cottonwood trees pressed with spider silk, with
words written in grasshopper spit and tree sap, and scented with
the white flowers of the black locust. They came to a woman—a
human—living in Sunny Glenn within the humming barbed wire confines
of a city so secret, the only Commander-in-Chief to know of its
existence was the one who named it Sanctuary.

At
one point, Sanctuary had been known as Area 71, even then a place
of beauty upon the razorlike teeth of jagged mountains and glacier
lakes, with forests all around and a night sky so pristine it
seemed you could pluck the stars out of their velvet cushion and
drink the moonbeams and sleep on a cloud of apple
blossoms.

At
one time, the houses of Sanctuary were made of stone or brick or
wood or perhaps concrete, with gray slate roofs and close cut lawns
with carefully edged sidewalks and a steel car fresh from the
factory parked out front. The streets were paved with asphalt, the
dirt roads neatly surfaced with crushed gravel.

They
say that all roads lead to Rome, but that was not exactly the case
with Headquarters, as Area 71—as it was then known—happened to have
been laid out on a grid system despite the less than accommodating
terrain. However, in the central building of the central block of
all the paved roads of Area 71, stood Headquarters. They say it was
a fine building, constructed of concrete with layers of blast
doors, no windows, a perfect rectangle situated so all the walls
were equidistant to the opening of the Rift the entire base had
been built around. They say that Headquarters was the accumulated
intellectual wealth of thirty-two geniuses and it cost a quarter of
a million to build. They say that its completion was heralded as
the means to end every war on earth.

They
say a lot of things about Headquarters but we can't confirm a word
of it, because on the very same day that work on it was finished,
it imploded into the Rift.

And
with the loss of thirty-two geniuses and their accumulated wealth
of knowledge, the layers of blast doors, cubic miles of concrete,
and the quarter of a million dollars, came the gain of all the
things that Never Were.

And
things have never been the same since.

The
inhabitants of Area 71 found themselves that mid-afternoon—and
every mid-afternoon, evening, night, morning, and mid-afternoon
again—in a city of structured chaos. In the place of every metal
post grew an aspen which quaked in the wind. Slate became draping
curtains of wild hops, bricks crumbled to ivy, wood turned to woven
willows, pipes became hollowed roots, the porcelain throne remained
porcelain and the cast iron ranges remained cast iron with enamel
freckles. Furnishings kept their forms, as did all personal
affects—except soup spoons which became bogies which took up
residence in the walls and soured milk if not placated with a small
meal laid out for them in the center of the kitchen floor every
night.

The
inhabitants of what used to be Area 71 also found their number had
doubled: One half of them was as always had been and always would
be, as square and solid as Headquarters had been; and the other
half as playful and terrifying as the world when the sun closed his
eyes for the night and the moon squinted at the world below,
half-awake and cranky.

Some
of the new inhabitants were huge with teeth like the outline of the
mountains silhouetted against the sunset, some were small as a
mouse and spread luck good or ill, some sang mournfully upon the
shores of the glacier lakes, some would tip a hat and say, “Good
day, my dear.” But then there were the others, the ones who would
seek the price of your soul, and buy it.

At
first, the residents of Area 71 tried to subdue the strangers, but
it is said that was ineffectual. Likewise ineffective was their
attempts to drive the strangers away or confine them by another
method. The newcomers had no rulership, no sense of greater being
beyond their territories and the pecking order within their own
personal boundaries. The strangers had their own tailors and
cobblers and bakers and mailmen—they required nothing of humans and
humans required nothing of them. Only the bogies, which had once
been soup spoons, demanded anything of their humans and they proved
useful for those who treated them well and knew how to
ask.

So
it was that the obvious conclusion came about: The Things that
Never Were ignored the humans, and the humans pretended the Never
Weres still Never Were.

But
as an ecosystem adjusts to new elements, so does society to its
members. Lucy graced the rabbit ears of new Technicolor television
sets, Donald taught GIs to put rubbers on their gun barrels, and
the bald eagle raced nose to nose with the mother bear to kiss
astronaut toes upon the surface of the moon. New geniuses learned
the power of atoms and tested it, and the aerial drift of toxins
from the salty flats miles away brought the divided community of
Area 71 together during a slightly radioactive winter.

Aside from the radioactivity, the residents of Area 71 knew
none of what was happening outside the humming fence of their
community. Tucked away in the jaws of the mountain ridge as they
were, they received no televisions—as the first television sets
brought on base had immediately changed into poisonous chimeras.
And even if they had one which had remained cathode ray tube and
glass and wood, it would have been useless because there was, and
still is, no television signal.

With
a new level of security stemming from the space race, came a new
leadership, and Area 71 was re-filed instead as code name
Sanctuary, and Sanctuary began to enforce the draft amongst the
Never Weres. As many of them possessed inherently violent natures,
they did not mind a greater purpose for their primal bloodlust. The
Sanctuary units proved impressive and were often employed during
times of non-war.

But,
on the day we join Miss Betty Cratchet, there was no such
employment and no prospect of anything but peace and boredom for
the thrill-seeking Never Weres.

The
clock in Sunny Glenn market still read 2:45, but it was nearer to 3
o' clock, and so Betty sat upon her favorite willow bench to watch
the gremlins scurry up the tower with their wrenches to change the
hands for tea time. Betty had boring blue eyes and somewhat dark
hair and her father's military jaw. She was not whiskey in a
teacup, nor was she bubbly sweet soda, she was more akin to a cup
of hot milk or perhaps spiced eggnog on the days she really had her
wits about her. In short, she was best had alone, right before bed,
in place of any dessert. Long had she accepted her solitary station
in life, but that made it no easier to swallow, and it could not
make her home any warmer.

Betty settled her wool on the slender leaves forming living
armrests, and dug into her bag for a crochet hook. Black locust
perfume wafted from the opening. Betty inhaled and lingered there,
eyes closed. It was her favorite smell, but the only ones who would
know where the trees themselves when she stood beneath them and
pried loose a bunch of white flowers.

Her
fingers brushed thick paper. An envelope. She took it carefully out
of her bag, holding it by her thumb and forefinger as though it
were a bit of rubbish the alley cat had dug out of the garbage
chest in front of her house right before the bogeymen came to
collect it immediately after dark. Then she flipped over the
letter, tied across the middle with red baling twine, and read the
fine scrawl addressing the front, the ink glossy in the afternoon
sun.

Her
Elegance

Residing at the Blue Door

with
the Pot of Towering Sunflowers

on
the Steps of the Porch with a Red Swing

Amid
a pile of bills to “The Current Resident of 246-O Work One Road”,
the letter made her smile and added a charmed touch of color to her
cheeks. It made her feel so...so...

Special.

Reality slapped her in the face.

It
went against everything she'd ever known. She'd been risking it by
living on the edge of Sunny Glenn and Brimstone.

She
looked in vain for a place to dispose of the letter. The market
didn't have trash bins or chests; they were banned on account of
inciting too many fights. For an instant she considered just
abandoning the letter on the bench. Footsteps pattered on
cobblestones while Betty tamed her heart and she dropped her purse
over the letter and told herself that no secret policeman would
make his rounds in this part of Sanctuary, and even if he did
chance to be here, he wouldn't check her belongings for sign of
devils.

Curiosity restored, Betty flipped it from one side to the
other and considered that the paper devils used, was flesh taken
from those who owed them.

Thus
preoccupied, she did not notice the market was too empty for 3 o'
clock, a time when it should have bustled, should have been filled
with the songs of birds, with the fragrance of chicken grease and
pine cones; she did not notice that the things that Never Were
weren't taunting one another and testing territories for fresh
fruit and mates.

Sunny Glen was made of factories and bank buildings long
abandoned and overgrown by honeysuckle and old man's beard. Not too
long ago, some say, back when weeds could be cut down and
automobiles clogged the streets, humans worked there. A very long
time ago, there might have been a glen in the forest with a creek
cutting through larkspur and mallow.

Now
it was habitat for the things that Never Were. And Betty had
forgotten this at a most inconvenient time.

She
looked around and finally saw the crows gathered in a circle. They
surrounded a solitary crow in the center. As she watched, he cocked
his head first one way then the next. He bowed to those around him
then his black feathers caught tendrils of light cutting through
clouds as he puffed up his chest.

He
began his soliloquy.

Betty knew a murder when she saw one, but couldn't look away.
Couldn't plug her ears. And she certainly couldn't leave, although
she should have.

It
held her in a trance, that cawing explanation, keeping her hanging
on every hop, every nod to the other crows, every cluck and swoop
giving weight to his argument; Betty could not step away, from the
very beginning to the very last
caw
. To her credit, it is often
impossible to step away from such things. Not only is it in human
nature to observe those things which we really ought not, but it is
in Never Were nature to further seduce and sway a person from doing
as they had originally planned to do. It was why the kelpies
regularly drowned drunks despite the public notice sign by the
river and the frequent reminder in the newspapers. It was why even
now the fairies stole husbands and wives. There was simply nothing
that Betty could have done to leave that circle of crows or to have
not heard the victim's final appeal.

The
crow in the center swayed, his feathers ruffled. His last words had
been said, and he, like those all too still trees and shrubs and
streets, waited in silence for the verdict.