Entropic Quest

seemed familiar. It was circumscribed somehow, infinite and impossible.

  She would never resign herself though. Each newcomer might be a key, and at her sensing of this one, Ember scuttled down the tree and ran at top speed to where she knew it would be. Along the way she met no one, heard nothing but songbirds and the buzzing of bees. She dashed through the duff, leapt over trickling streams, and unerringly made her way to the clearing where Edeline sat on a rock, crying and listening to a crow.

  "Scat!" Ember called, rushing up to the bird. She picked the thing up by its talons and hurled it into the air. The crow squawked loudly as Ember continued to threaten it with words, and when the bird saw the girl pick up a rock, it climbed higher and flew off. Ember threw the rock at it anyway.

  "And never come back, do you hear?" she yelled at the crow.

  Edeline stared at the tiny girl, who was wearing a sort of skirt made of thickly wound ivy, and a scant top of the same. Ember was likewise shocked by Edeline's outfit.

  "What are you wearing? A napkin? What is that?" she asked, and without any sense of personal boundaries she reached over and started rubbing Edeline's terrycloth top.

  "You'll sure get a lot of attention with that," Ember snickered, and then added, "of course you will anyway. New blood, and sexy too. Look at you! Yeah, you'll get a lot of attention in here."

  "I'm lost," Edeline tried to shrug the girl's hand off her, but Ember kept touching until she was satisfied. Then she stood back a few paces and with a hand on her hips, delivered her verdict.

  "What did you expect? You had to know what was coming."

  "It's all a mistake," Edeline pleaded. "I don't belong here. I'm not one of them!"

  Ember laughed, and with Ember laughter was usually cruel.

  "You mean one of us, and you are. It's obvious."

  "I'm not," Edeline insisted. "I'm an ordinary person. I was just getting ready for work. I have meetings. My husband. My life."

  "That's all over," Ember declared. "You might as well get used to it."

  "That's what he said," Edeline sniffed, recalling her interview with Captain Snig, and she told Ember everything that had happened that day. Ember stood listening impatiently. Sure, it was important to the woman, Ember thought, but she had been hearing such stories forever. The only detail of interest to her was the rapidity with which the woman had been processed. All that in just a few hours, she considered. They're getting more efficient these days. She already knew all about Snig. Edeline wasn't the first he'd dispatched to this place.

  "Look on the bright side," Ember snarled when Edeline was finished and had resumed scrolling tears down the side of her face. "That Snig will be dead and long gone in no time, and you'll still be young and yourself and alive. Of course that's also the not-so-bright side," she added. "It'll be true for Snig's great-grandchildren too, and so on."

  "And what about you?" Edeline asked.

  "Me?" Ember said. "I'm hungry, that's what. I'll bet you are too. Come on, it's time to learn a new lesson."

  Ember turned and trotted off into the trees, urging Edeline to follow. She did, finding it difficult to keep up. It didn't occur to the girl that the older one might not be as fast or as used to the ground as she was. Despite her vast age, Ember retained the brain structure of a child. She had accumulated much knowledge from all her experience, but certain developments would never occur in her mind, a greater sense of empathy being one of them.

  "Over here," she shouted as she jumped straight off the ground and onto a branch ten feet high in the air. Edeline caught up and waited below as she watched Ember scurry aloft.

  "Well, come on," Ember urged, but Edeline merely held up her hands.

  "What?" she asked. "I can't get up there."

  "You have to," Ember scolded. She was already several flights up, but seeing that Edeline remained adamantly earthbound, she relented, and hustled back down. She flew off the last branch, doing a back flip in mid-air, and landed beside the new blood.

  "I'll give you a boost," she informed her, and before Edeline knew what was happening, the girl had somehow hoisted her half up the trunk with inconceivable strength in that miniature frame. Edeline grabbed onto the branch and pulled herself up the rest of the way. Getting her bearings, she felt a bit wobbly and decided not to look down. In the meantime, Ember had scurried back up and was quickly above her once more.

  "Climb up!" she called back, and Edeline gingerly followed, slowly making her way, one branch at a time up what seemed to be a kind of pine tree. The bark was sticky enough that it helped her grab hold, but also made her hands feel dirty and gross. By the time she reached Ember, she'd managed to get a small tear in the leg of her pants, which were also smeared with splotches of the gooey brown tar.

  Ember was holding out a vine which was covered with little black balls of some kind.

  "Keriberi," she told Edeline. "It's a fruit."

  "Oh," Edeline figured she ought to say something. The keriberis looked like deer droppings to her. She reached out and started to pull one off of the vine, but Ember smacked her hand away.

  "Not like that," Ember said. "Do you want us to starve? No, you have to get them off in this particular way. Here, you'll see."

  Ember placed her thumb and forefinger around one of the berries and began to twist it, slowly to the left.

  "One turn," she said, "then another. Lefty loosey, right?"

  On the third turn the berry came off.

  'Now look," Ember said, pointing to the spot where she'd unfastened the thing. Already a new one was growing in its place.

  "You take them off this way," Ember lectured, "and they replenish. Take them off any other way and the spot remains vacant forever. You see? This way we never run out."

  "I get it." Edeline said, and when Ember gave her the berry, she popped into in her mouth and was about to crunch her teeth down when Ember gave another cry and shouted,

  "No, no, don't bite it. Just let it rest on your tongue. You'll get more nutrition that way. No chewing, remember."

  "Okay," Edeline mumbled, and kept her teeth up. She felt a little silly, sitting way up in a tree, sucking on a twist-off wild fruit like hard candy, constantly being scolded by this nasty little child. What a day, she sighed to herself. And that was before it started raining.

  Four

  With the rain came more tears, which only served to irritate Ember even more.

  "Look," the girl snapped, "you don't know how lucky you are."

  "Lucky?" sniffed Edeline. "Lucky?" she repeated, raising her voice and nearly losing her balance. It would have been a long drop to the ground, but at that moment Edeline didn't care. She was on the verge of just letting it all go. Ember read her thoughts through her eyes.

  "It wouldn't do you any good," she snorted and shook her head. "You don't even know what you are, do you? Where have you been? Don't they talk about it anymore out there in the world? No, don't answer, because I know they do. You're not the only new blood to come in lately. We get them regular, a steady stream, but most of them at least have a clue. Most of them didn't have it so easy as you."

  "What's so easy?" Edeline shouted, and she turned her back on Ember and began to pick her way down the tree. She'd had enough of the little snot and, without even thinking about it, had decided to make her own way. Ember was tempted to let her go, but there was something she'd wanted to ask.

  "Wait up," Ember called, but didn't hesitate and dropped in three huge leaps to the ground, where she waited as Edeline slipped and groped and faltered and slid her way to the bottom. By the time she got down there, her outfit was essentially ruined, torn and smudged in a hundred places. She stood up, looked down at herself and shook with rage and frustration.

  "Don't worry about that," Ember chided. "You'll be better off without them. We'll make you something like this," gesturing at her own adornment.

  "Great, I get to walk around wearing a pile of leaves. What's next I wonder?" Edeline lamented.

  "Actually, it's not just a
pile of leaves," Ember informed her, patting her skirt. "It's rootless ivy. It's a living thing. Waterproof, comfortable, warm, sort of. Warm in its own way, I guess. You'll see."

  "Maybe I will and maybe I won't," Edeline sniffed and looked around for an escape route. She wondered if the girl would ever leave her alone.

  "I just want to know one thing," Ember asked, sensing again Edeline's intent.

  "What was that crow telling you?" she continued.

  "The crow?" Edeline had nearly forgotten about it in all the overwhelming confusion. She had to think hard to remember.

  "Something about getting a call from someone, I think," she reported. "Oh, and something else about being a gatherer. I guess that was it."

  "Oh, so now she's back in the game," Ember snapped. "Deciding who's who and what's what is she now? We'll see about that! Wait. You said 'getting a call'?"

  "Or being called, I forget the exact words."

  "The Hidden One has called you to order?"

  "Yes!" Edeline jumped. "That's it. That's what the crow said. Do you know what it means?"

  "She's calling a new blood? That's weird. Oh well, I guess you'll be coming with me," Ember sighed. "The Hidden One is calling me too."

  "I give up," Edeline threw up her hands. "It's all nonsense to me."

  "Come on," Ember said, “let's at least get you settled a bit, get you out of those rags. I'll explain it some more as we go."

  "About me being so lucky?"

  "Sure, and other things too," Ember told her. She turned, but this time didn't run off, but walked