The Free-dom, Post #2

Chapter One:


Cactus, sometimes known as Cassandra by a few people still alive, looked fondly at her tiny house. It was one of eleven in the tree-top village that had formed four years earlier, one year before the event that had changed the planet. In that first year they’d been no more than a group of hippies who wanted to fade out of society and live quietly in the back woods, but soon enough they’d all begun to get a feeling that the world would soon change. Through travel, and limited Internet use, they built up their society into eighteen groups all around the world. Then they created a messenger system that allowed them to trade with each other without governments knowing about them. Each village was called a Free-dom; free kingdom.

The one Cactus lived in, the original Free-dom, was located where the Queen Charlotte Islands once were. Now each island was a hill in the midst of a thriving forest, thrust up from the ocean when magma escaped through a crack in the tectonic plates. That had caused a huge chain reaction throughout the world, sucking thousands of square kilometers into the mantel while pushing mountains higher and creating new land as volcanoes erupted, though there was fortunately less of those than people might have expected, especially around the Pacific Ocean.
The political results of this was a near total collapse of every government and economy on the planet except in places like the Middle East and Africa where there was really no economy in the first place or government rule was sketchy at best, though there were several that tried to hold on with dying hands. This was made difficult by the many dictators that rose up to take advantage of the hordes of scared and directionless people. Through it all, lying low in the background, the Free-doms prospered with their simple existence.

Cactus smiled when she thought about it and walked across the tree limb to her home. Inside, her little brother, Desmond, and her sister, Skitch, were still sleeping, even though breakfast was already an hour done. She opened the wooden door and stepped inside.

The house was made entirely out of recycled materials; bottles, cans and old car tires mostly, all held together with an eco-friendly ‘cement’. The sun shone through the glass of the roof, casting little pools of color all around the room. A spiral staircase of tires with bottles in the center led upstairs to where they all slept.

"Oi!" she called. "Time to get up, oh sleepy ones. There are plenty of chores that have to be done and only half a day left to do ‘em!" A few moments later her younger siblings were standing before her, yawning and rubbing their eyes. "Breakfast is still out, but I’d hurry if I was you ‘cause who knows who might come along and eat it all." Desmond grinned at her and skipped out of the door, Molly following somewhat slower. Cactus took a breath, smiled and carried on in their wake.

The Free-dom was laid out amongst the seven biggest trees in the Queen Charlottes before 2012, and seven of the biggest trees in the world. They had been quite a bit smaller at that time, with room for maybe fifty people among the branches, but after the eruptions the ash from the volcanoes mixed with certain chemicals in the air and when it settled into the soil it caused extreme growth spurts in any plants that took nutrients from where it landed. Thus the new areas of land that were pushed up from the ocean floor were soon covered in forest and the older trees grew to a quarter again their original size and could now likely hold up to one hundred people. By the third year all the ash had been used up, but many of the younger plants still seemed to grow at amazing speeds. A bonus to the process was chemicals being taken from the atmosphere by ash and less carbon dioxide due to the increased vegetation and the destruction of many industries.

The three siblings walked along the branch leading to their house, the highest in the Free-dom, it was about two hundred fifty feet high and three feet across at the middle, then they climbed down the trunk about a hundred feet onto the landing, a large stone Platform, the only place in the village made of stone. That was where meals were cooked and eaten and where any celebrations were held. That day, just like many other days, it was nearly deserted except the people who were teaching the youngest children basic lessons, kitchen workers who were making up the winter’s supplies of dried and preserved food and those that were getting too old to go up and down the trees all the time. One woman was teaching two kids to write near the food table. She smiled at the three of them as Skitch and Dizzy picked up what little food was left and devoured it. Another few minutes saw them at the ‘chore tree’ where a large piece of salvaged plastic had peoples daily chores written on it.

"Dizzy," Cactus said, reading next to his name, "you’re in the loom room and Skitch, you’re with the goats and chickens."

"What are you doing, Cactus?" Desmond asked, peering around her.

"I’m down foraging." Skitch and Dizzy looked at each other wistfully. It was always nice to be on the ground and even though a person could leave at any time they wanted, there was always work to be done around the village. After all, a community of any size can't really function if no one does anything.

"If I didn't like weaving I'd come down with you," Dizzy stated.

"If I didn't like food I'd come with," Skitch said. "But I really do enjoy life. Besides," she added, "Yuki would probably throttle me if she found out I was shirking chores." They all grinned. Yuki was the elderly Japanese lady who, if people were allowed to run things singly there, would have been commander of the kitchens. And she was very strict when it came to chores, especially the ones that had to do with food. There had been a few times when Cactus Dizzy and Skitch had all been rapped across the back with her bamboo cane, though only ever hard enough to sting for a few minutes.

"Well," Cactus said, checking the sun's progress, "the foraging party is leaving in about an hour, so I'll see you tonight. Have fun!" She gave them a broad smile and a jaunty wave and walked across the Platform to grab her forage bags.

"So, brother mine," Skitch said, "we should probably make like a cactus and get to work." Desmond grinned.

"But cacti don't move, do they?"

"Don't they? I could have sworn one just walked away from us." She laughed. "All right, I'll see you later Dizzy." She walked across the Platform to the ladder that led up to the goat and chicken pens, near the very top of the trees as Dizzy climbed up a different one to the Loom Room, where he'd be put to work weaving blankets for the coming winter. The first two winters had caught them only prepared for the mild coastal weather, but now that they weren't right by the ocean cold winds and harsh snow had left them freezing for five month. The year before they had gotten to work making more blankets but couldn't finish enough for everyone as the population had grown when they took in refugees who had survived the first winter. But now they were finally finishing up the job and making a few extras in case there were more refugees to come.

The loom room was made from glass bottles of all shapes and sizes held together with the same recycled cement as on most of their buildings. It was high ceilinged, about twelve feet, and contained six large looms and two cupboards full or thread, yarn, crochet hooks, knitting needles and sewing needles. There were six people already in the room; Bamboo, a skinny eighteen-year-old who grew like his namesake, Sarah, a woman in her mid-twenties, two elderly ladies named Doreen and Cathy and an old man named Seth with his adopted granddaughter who was nine and just learning to weave. Doreen and Cathy both smiled as he walked in and Sarah said "Good morning, Dizzy." He smiled back and gave a small wave before sitting down at the only empty loom and beginning. Within moments he was lost in the motion of the shuttle and the threads.

One hundred feet above him, Skitch had arrived at the goat and chicken barn. It was located across three of the trees, twenty feet below the treetop gardens. They had built small platforms to hold sod and a small pond with sturdy bridges running between them. They had two male goats and four females, along with ten chickens and a rooster. Being up that high kept them away from the occasional raids that were sent out into the forest by the latest Vancouver dictator. According to messengers and scouts, he had been spreading tales that there had been a science research facility that had been destroyed in the cataclysm and set loose 'monsters' that were the results of maniacal tests. So naturally they had to be exterminated. Those raiding parties would kill anything that happened to run across their path and the Free-dom wasn't going to risk it's animals.

Skitch walked across the pasture to the stable where the animals were kept. Smear, a boy of fifteen with wily hair and perpetual smears of dirt across his face, was inside, staring straight into the eyes of the youngest goat, Charley. Skitch was used to his crazy points, in fact she loved him all the more for them, so she half ignored him and got to work shovelling the stall out. Smear joined her as she was putting down dried leaves for goat bedding. He kissed her lightly and started spreading leaves.

"I'm surprised you haven't asked me what I was doing," he said, some minutes later.

"Well, I'm used to it now. You're always doing something I haven't seen before." She could almost feel him smile behind her. "Now that we're on the subject, though, what were you doing?"

"Oh, I was just attempting to feel Charley's thoughts." Skitch blinked once, but it didn't shock her as much as it might other people.

"And could you?" she asked, smiling. She turned around and met his eyes.

"Oddly enough, I think I almost could. I could see...emotions floating around behind her eyes and I felt something nudging at the back of my mind." He paused for a moment, thinking. "I guess they just don't think like us, so that makes it hard to do." He started working again, but Skitch's attention was hooked on it. Something in the back of her own mind was drawn to the concept.

"Well, how'd you do it?" She leaned against the stall door, waiting for him to answer. He took his time to think, spreading leaves evenly over the floor.

"Okay, before everything happened, my mom worked as a professional healer." He turned a little sad as he spoke, having lost his mother in the cataclysm. "By a healer I mean someone who helps people through more mystical means than scientific. Anyway, ever since I was little she'd been teaching me about meditation and control of the mind because that was how she would find illnesses in people. She would sort of put her mind into her patient's mind and get them to explore their body. Then she would use natural healing methods to fix it. It was a special talent of hers that I don't think anyone else had. But, she had been trying to teach me for years and I was just getting the hang of it when it all happened. Lately I've been practising on animals." He smiled a little. "It seems that people get a little creeped out if I stare at them for long periods of time." Skitch laughed a little and they got back to work. After a few hours the meal bell was rung and they walked to the Platform, chatting gaily.

Skitch sat beside her brother on the benches for lunch, Spam Can, Seth's granddaughter, sitting on her other side. Desmond was talking to his brown haired, callus handed best friend, Barbberry. He was only twelve years old, but Barbberry had probably seen and done more than any of the adults in the Free-dom. When they'd found him a year ago after the spring thaw, unconscious and starved, he wouldn't talk to anyone and grew violent if anyone touched him. At that point he had been called Barbboy and it was only after Dizzy had talked to him that he had shown how sweet he could really be. After that, once people started warming up to him a bit, he had been called the Barbed Fruit, hard on the outside, sweet on the in, and that had been shortened to Barbberry.

"How went the weaving, brother dearest?" Skitch asked as they all settled down to eat.

"It was lovely as it always is. How was mucking the stall?"

"Riveting. Setting down leaves is like an art. Every shade of brown has to compliment the others." She had lapsed into a phony French accent, making them all chuckle. They also knew just what mucking the stall was like; dirty, smelly and sometimes boring if you didn't have good conversation. "But hey, what were you guys doing?" she asked Barbberry and Spam Can.

"I was learning to weave," Spam said. "It's really hard. I don't know how everyone else gets it so easy."

"No worries," Dizzy told her, "You were doing really well for your first day. You'll pick it up in no time." She beamed at him.

"I was harvesting Jack beans," Barbberry said. "We almost need bigger ladders to reach the tops, y'know. They're getting crazy." The others nodded knowingly. The Jack beans had grown to six feet in the first year of living in the Free-dom due to the ashes from a volcano in Oregon. They hadn't stopped growing after that. The same thing had happened to many of the vegetables in their garden and they now had tomatoes as big as a person's head, heads of lettuce it took two people to carry and potatoes the size of watermelons. Fruit trees had also exploded in size, though there weren't any right near the village so the foraging parties were established.

Before long everyone had finished eating and headed back to their chores. After no more than an hour the first forager was back and unloading his bags of fruit, building materials and various plants on the Platform. Fifteen minutes later, Krill and Chill, the only twins in the village, returned as well and were soon followed by Angora, Tick and Simmer. The only two left by supper were Itch and Cactus.

When they returned to the animals, Smear watched the animals as they grazed and Skitch read beside the stable until the sun started dipping behind the mountains. The sky turned to red and then to purple and finally the meal bell rang. They put the animals away and climbed back down to the Platform. As they sat around the fire, Skitch and Dizzy exchanged worried looks.

"What if there was a raiding party?" he asked. "It wouldn't be the first time one of our people were caught by them. You remember Cadet, right?" Skitch nodded with a sad shudder. Cadet had been one of the earlier refugees of the first winter. Before 2012 he had been in army cadets and his need for order held true through anything. It had been his idea to make the chore tree in the few months that he'd been with them. Unfortunately, he was caught by a raid party and shot, probably the moment they saw him. A group of foragers found him the next morning, blessed his body and left him to be taken back to the Earth. That night they'd all fasted in his honor and celebrated his life with singing, dancing and playing instruments.

"Of course I remember Cadet," she said.

"Well, it's fully possible that they were caught by-"

"They weren't caught!" she snapped. "They couldn't be. They just couldn't."They were silent for a few minutes, listening to the snatches of conversation over the sound of the fire and Drummah's drum.

"Not back yet. I wonder what..."

"...wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last."

"...worry, they'll be back in the hour. Probably found a..."

"Cactus!" someone yelled. "Where ya been? Everyone else was back..." They trailed off. "Oh no. That's not good." The two siblings looked around and saw Cactus and a stanger supporting Itch, who was bleeding from his leg and stomach. About half of the village started talking all at once while the other half stared in stunned silence. Cactus spoke calmly to the people around her while Yuki gathered medical supplies from the kitchen and finally told them to lay him down near the fire. Everyone obeyed and went slent as she told Spellcheck, Sarah's twelve-year-old daughter, to get a bucket and a rag. The blonde girl was back in a minute, during which Yuki had already gotten Itch's clothes off. She started cleaning the wounds, asking Cactus to tell her what had happened and issuing commands.

"Itch and I were gathering some mushrooms when a raiding party charged up behind us. I managed to climb a tree and I was helping him up when they shot him. And then he fell..." She shuddered, remembering the expression on his face, the silent message. "Get higher," it told her. So she climbed, feeling like she had betrayed him the whole way. "He was unconscious when he hit the ground, that or faking it, and the raiders ran past. I went down to check if he was dead, 'cause I didn't know up there, and I tried to stop the bleeding as best I could. Then I started carrying him home, but I wouldn't have made it without Zachalope's help." She gestured to the stranger.

"You have a our thanks, then," Yuki said. "If he'd gotten here much later I wouldn't have been able to do much for him. It's a long shot as it is, I think, with all the blood he's lost." She frowned sadly down at the inconscious Itch and got to work taking the bullet out of his stomach. Luckily enough, it had missed all of the major organs and hadn't gone in very far. The other had gone straight through his left leg, just barely missing his artery, so it wasn't bleeding as bad as it could have been. Yuki had put Sarah to work sewing it up as she had the best stitches in the village and wasn't afraid of all the blood. A few minutes later Janae, Yuki's eldest daughter, came out of the kitchen with a poultice to put on his wounds.

"Well, thank you profusely for being at the right place at the right time and helping out," Yuki said as she put on the bandages.

"What kind of a person would I be if I didn't help?" he said. "After all, when you're part of the Free-doms you have to help the other residents. If theer was a contract I'm certain that would be part of it." She smiled at that.

"Which Free-dom have you come from, then?"

"The Rocky Mountain Free-dom. Before that I was at Mexico City Free-dom."

"A long journey," Yuki said.

"Never ending, really," he replied.

"So," Angora began, "what news from the south? Unless you'd like food first after all that traveling."

"Good food would be wonderful, really. I haven't had a good meal since I left." He grinned. "And the news I have isn't particularly important. I think it can wait a little longer."

"Good choice," Yuki said. "Skitch, will you go grab him a plate?" She nodded and filled up a plate with potatoes, fried fruit, bread and salad and handed it off to him. He smiled his thanks and began eating with incredible enthusiasm.

"A little hungry, there?" she asked dryly. He grinned a bit more around a mouthful and continued eating.

"That defintely hit the spot." He patted his belly. "Thank you for the food. Is there a bed that comes along with it?" Skitch laughed.

"No, we're just going to cast you out to sleep on the ground." Yuki, who had finshed treating Itch and sent a few people to take him up to a bed, heard this and walked over, rolling her eyes.

"I'm sure anyone will offer you sleeping arrangements," the elderly lady said, "though some of the houses are fairly full."

"You could stay with us," Skitch said. "That is, if you don't mind climbing a hundred feet or so."

"Oh, I live for climbing," he said, exaggeratedly. "Especially right after I've eaten." They both grinned and Skitch led the way through the branches to her tiny home perched in the treetop.