New World
The baby was conceived on the day the earth slipped closer to the sun. Maré was not quite sure which came first: the flash of heat, the powerful orgasm, or the sun and moon suddenly a few millimeters closer within reach. Perhaps they happened concurrently, perhaps it was pure chance. She would never know, of course, but she felt in the ensuing weeks slightly guilty, as if she might have caused the slip with that one uncontrolled moment of lust and love. She had felt the world shift as she cried out repeatedly -- not the hollow 'Oh God!' that accompanied earlier orgasms, real and imagined, but something more primal, more heartfelt, more natural. Something that came simultaneously from within her abdomen and from a source greater than any one individual.
Never mind the causes. The flash of love was real, the life within her was real, and the main thing now was to climb.
She set out and never stopped, searching for higher ground as the snow and ice melted off the tops of mountains and dripped at first slowly then in greater cascades and finally in waterfalls, down into every valley and rock crevice. Deserts filled, and people built platforms from which to save their electronics, for though the sun's closer proximity heated the earth almost overnight, it was the rising water they feared most. Maré did not mind; something guided her to the highest mountain and she climbed each week.
The father of the child gave up by Week 15. He gave it a shot, at least, but she didn't expect him to stay with her, or to understand her calm in the face of perceived calamity. She carried with her a certainty that grew stronger each day, and the marvelous memory of the Big Bang that started it all, and so they parted friends and she sent him back down the mountain to join the panicking crowds below, where he belonged.
And so she carried on alone, through week 16, 17, 18, 19... And the earth heated and filled, and her belly heated and filled. Newspapers and radios and televisions far below lamented the good old days of the Great Flood, wished for a mere 40 days and 40 nights, but Maré knew in her heart that 40 weeks was her reality, and all that mattered. Her belly grew with each week and she climbed higher and felt lighter. The thinning air did not press on her lungs; she felt full in all ways, elevated and elated. By Week 35 she knew she was close to the top. An energy lifted her and guided her, and she climbed, her belly swelling and leading her forward, each step lighter than the previous.
In the 40th week Maré breathed her last breath, just as the baby was born. There was no panic, no pain. Her contractions began on a Wednesday morning, and she found a flat rock and lay down, welcoming the end of her journey and the blessing that was this new life. She was grateful that she was here, alone, with the world of blue all around -- blue sky above, and blue earth climbing up to meet her here at the highest peak. She wondered briefly what happened to the people below, how high they had built their towers and whether they saved their cell phones or their children first. She wondered if there were others like her. But she didn't wonder for long, because then the pushing began in earnest and the baby was on its way. There was one last hot flash, much like the Big Bang from 40 weeks back, a sensation so terrifically new, where she felt the sun, the earth, the water all around her, and the birth of this new world, too. She knew in that moment that she would call her baby Blue -- if she were around to call her baby anything at all, that is. With her last breath she connected with Blue, and saw her gorgeous girl blink once with large knowing eyes, smile, and swim away.
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Author's Note
Well, here is my 'wet' story. It is pure fantasy, conceived on a plane and written on the fly.
This is still in draft form. Would love some feedback here, as to whether the ending works, whether it comes too abruptly, whether there is too much change all at once...
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I would say, yes indeed your ending works, was a surprise & necessary - all through this I was wondering who would take care of the baby on top of the mountain. The whole piece works for me.
Wow! This was written on the fly!?! Bittersweet ending. Love that last connection..it kinda tugged on my heart.
Goodness, what a piece - Great ending here, Michelle. Big like.
Phew, whew. This has such an interesting sci-fi tone to it, a little Jean Auel, as well, and fascinating to read.
I liked the father giving up at week 15. At first I thought the typical, that he had left her, not wanted the baby, but to find that they are climbing a mountain, and he just couldn't make it was a great twist. A wonderful interplay with the notion of pregnancy.
The ending works well, especially liked the infant swimming away. The name Mare I found hard to warm up to, I kept thinking of a horse.
Sex and birth and death beautifully wrapped in mystery. I would like to have seen the father stay with her, actually: but it does add to the mystery for her to be alone with the something guiding her and Blue's large knowing eyes.
Gosh, I love the idea of 'blue earth.' There's such strength in this piece. (There's some word other than 'strength' that I want. Forbearance?) Really wonderful writing.
(Just as a tiny thing - typo in last para. You've got 'hightest' instead of 'highest.')
I love the beginning and the end.This really caught my interest. I recently watched a video of the first British H Bomb being detonated and for some reason that image, all mixed up with an immaculate conception myth, was what I carried through to the end.
It is a lot of stuff in a short piece, and I'm not sure whether it works. If you're planning to keep this length,perhaps you could try having Mare wake up in the water after the opening paragraph and follow her experience of labour and birth? Just a possibility to consider ( and probably reject!)
Love the image of the baby swimming away!
Something Carol wrote above, that there is a lot of stuff in a short piece, made me realize what's been nudging at me with this story - I think actually it could be a longer piece, allow you to spread out a bit more, see the interaction between man and woman before he gives up, etc., have a bit more understanding of just what environmental disaster occurred. Just me extra two cents.
As others have noted, there's a lot of stuff going on here. But a lot is inferred. The long weeks going by while the mountain is being climbed, for example, implies a journey, not just a corollary of the birthing term. The mountain is some metaphysical thing. The name 'mare' similarly implies to me some generalised concept of nature and fecundity. The 40 days/40 nights has obvious biblical undertones.
But if you take the story on its face value, its simple storyline, it falls down logically. There's no satisfactory outcome for the baby. There's no real rationale for the climbing.
Therefore, the story must not be simply about a woman escaping from a post-apocalyptic environment. Rather, it asks to be taken on a more abstract level.
It seems to me, therefore, that the story requires clarification as to its intentions. To give it naturalistic cred, it would need to be backfilled with plot detail and cause/effect logic. And that somehow doesn't seem to be where you want to go with it.
If left as a short piece, one possibility of returning it to a naturalistic level of believability would be to make it a story of a real mare. Reducing the timescape to a few days, and consequently the setting and action to more primeval ones of instinctual survival. That would feed in to the gaia theme which is implicit anyway in the whole mountain/wilderness thing.
Thanks, everyone, for your comments here. I am grateful for the generally positive reception, but all the constructive critique is much appreciated -- I feel the idea is there but the execution is still a work in progress; will work on it more and see how it evolves. Shorter, or longer... Eamon, your close read is especially appreciated. I am not sure I agree about the clarification of intentions, but I certainly see the need for more of something -- backfill, time, plot detail, etc. I prefer leaving a lot ambiguous, but you are right to point out that enough must be implied for it to work in the first place.
And yes, Cherise, Carol: maybe it needs to be longer.
As to the name, it is really meant to be Maré, pronounced in two syllables. Will change that promptly; this is what writing in strange basements and airports gets me...
Thank you all!
I like this a lot, together with your usual strong images, one of my favorites being "the panicking crowds below, where he belonged." I like the gentle loneliness of it all.