When the creatures of war arrive, a father must protect his children and his people. But can he stand against mighty machines built to scrape the sky?
Good day, Scribes!
As promised, another story AND it's fantasy. Sort of. I took heavy inspiration from one of my favourite artists, the father of Surrealism, Salvador Dali. Especially his stalkism works. I'd been fascinated by the physics-defying aspect of those long, stalk-like legs he painted on his elephants.
And so I wrote a story based on those stalking elephants, but with a twist. In the SANDF (South African National Defence Force), we have tanks called the Olifant Mk1 and Olifant Mk2, which were based on the Centurion Mk3 chassis. And the name Olifant is the Afrikaans word for Elephant. See where I'm going with this?
But I shalln't spoil it. You'll have to read the story to see how this madness evolved.
The memory of the day I met those monsters — a distant nightmare, the reality of which I still questioned — surfaced for the first time in decades, prompted by the tears running down and cleaning the dirt from my youngest daughter’s face. Ange was still small, an innocent of five years and the fourth born, but already showed great promise for the sciences, like her namesake had before her.
“Don’t worry your head.” I cupped her cheek. Her cries were fuelled by stories of the Olifants, taunted by the older children. It became a sort of initiation around the village. “We’re safe here.”
Small hands, soiled from playing in the ground recently tilled for the new season’s planting, gripped the hems of my trousers. She buried her face between the folds and sobbed warm water into the fabric.
She looked up at me, eyes red and moist. “But, Papa, what if they’ve finished eating the cities?” Ange’s tears threatened to fall once more.
I forced a smile from under cheeks heavy with age. “There are no cities for them to feast on here.” I waved an outstretched arm across the horizon to dry her fears.
Ange sniffed in the run of her nose and rubbed the back of her wrist against her right eye. A smudge of black soil darkened the skin around it.
“Papa, have you ever seen them?” she whimpered against the spasm in her chest.
“Sadly.” I nodded. “I was not much older than you when they first came.” I looked to the ruined city far away.
I’d almost forgotten about the Olifants through the decades of peace since I last saw them, first saw them. Me and Ma had escaped to a new land in the countryside after they came, when I was just a small boy, not even a man. We weren’t the only ones to make it here. I helped Ma build the large dome I now lived in with my own family.
Luckily Ma understood technology. She tried to teach me but I couldn’t get my head around all those numbers, and letters in place of numbers. She gave the new village power from the sun and the wind, and bio-luminescent lamps to light the streets and gardens. Ma had withered into the ground by the time my own seed sprung forth into the world.
“Were you scared?” Ange’s voice became a pitch higher.
My belly bounced from the laughter within. “Of course, child!” I sighed. “We all were and that’s what kept us alive.”
“Oh.” Her chin touched the collar of her yellow dress. She slumped her shoulders as she shuffled back to the circle of children around the fire, collected her mattress, then returned to me. “I’m scared.”
I pulled her to my chest and ran my hand down her long black hair. “Come, sleep.” I tucked her under the blanket and stroked my finger down the bridge of her nose. “I’ll watch over you.”
The night was still and calm, except for a few adolescents around a dying fire and myself. With the new moon, the village enjoyed a feast under the light of the stars to celebrate thirty years of peace. Ange fell asleep on the mattress by my feet.
I watched her small back rise and fall, interrupted by a spasm as she sighed. A shiver ran down my arms, shaking my old bones. I looked to the city that was once my home far in the east. A prick of heat dropped from my chest and into my belly when images of my youth invaded the quiet of my mind. I shook them away.
Purple rays stroked the bottom of the clouds, resting where the earth met the sky, as light seeped into the night. Dawn released its chills and I shivered again. I picked Ange up and started for our dome. The cold crept around my shoulders as the morning breezes ushered us toward shelter. The wind carried a deep hum. I stopped and let them crash into me then turned around, straining my ears.
They had come again.
Long legs moved with grace and precision across the empty fields in the horizon. The thought of something as beautiful and dangerous as an elephant being remodelled into a monster of war sent an icy shudder down the back of my head. Olifant silhouettes painted black against the orange of the rising sun. Five of them.
The adolescents banged rods against the warning bells and people poured out from their domes. The terror inched closer.
Ange jumped from my arms, ran behind me, and clutched my leg. Her little fingers clawed into my skin as an older child tried to pry her away. The adolescents took what they could and left. But I was too stricken to react, to follow them and find my children.
A burn surged in my gut, releasing my legs from their anchors, and I scrambled. The rest of the village followed my instinct but it was too late to make much of a defence. We grabbed our guns, knitted our nets, and buried makeshift wooden hedgehogs in the sand. The Olifants kept their cannons quiet for the time being, their barrels hanging and swaying with each stretching stride.
Hydraulic sighs drowned out the screams when their steel bulb feet hit the farm ground. In the sockets where their tusks once grew, sponson cannons swivelled and took aim. A bulb slammed into the soil, crushing the hedgehogs to my left. The impact blew me from my feet. Another and another Olifant followed its lead.
I crouched with arms flung over my head, frozen on the soil yet brown. The mechanical monsters skimmed across the village but our domed houses stayed up. Their hunger wasn’t for architecture anymore. We were ants and they kept their sights to the distance where Ange and the rest of the village’s children had run off to. With our mustered strength, we attacked but it was not enough. The terror of our children echoed through the valley and ice dripped down my bowels.
I scampered through the loose soil then ran to the hills. They paid me no mind as I past ahead of them. Blurry dots of shadow scurried across the face of the hill. I ran as fast and far as my crippling legs allowed. The children slipped into a cave in the hill.
Safe.
Dirty metallic spit ran down my throat and upturned my stomach while fires ate at my legs but I could not stop moving, my feet struggling across the loose tilled land. I struggled and forced through it, fighting off its pull until it caught my foot and I fell face-first into the black soil.
Then I realised that the hissing stopped.
I looked over my shoulder, my legs and arms refusing another push. The Olifants swayed on their halted stilts to the rhythm of the wind, the echoes of cogs and springs in motion resonated across the valley as they lifted their trunk cannons.
What could an old, simple man like me do? They were like gods.
Thunder from my childhood terrors boomed in a series of wrathful storms, missiles whistling through the dry air, splitting it apart.
My heart filled with sorrow and collapsed me into the dirt, my hands catching my head before hitting the soil. Silent agony occupied the time before the giant drops hit. Like the beating of the drums of war, the missiles found their target. I couldn’t witness the massacre.
I rubbed my face with the soil, soaking my tears so the earth could know my grief. The Governors, those of our blood, had slaughtered their people again and I could not bare to look with my shame, my cowardice. Why hadn’t they trampled me and ended this nightmare, I asked through the smell of manure and sand. A soft patter like rain on a tin roof arose from the village behind me to answer my pleas but as always, the earth’s words were beyond my understanding.
So I wept, longer and louder until it had no choice but to speak to me, until the only sound was that of my gurgling cries. And a sweet innocent call.
“Papa.” Ange’s voice taunted my ears as the rain drew closer. “Papa, up!” She pulled my hands down and greeted my burning eyes with a smile to rival the sun.
“Ange. You’re alive? But the Olifants...” I must have died and this was the land of the dead that I found her in. My neck strained as I lifted my tired head. The valley was the same as I had left it. “Ange, why are we not in paradise?” My breaths were becoming less and harsh, lungs too shocked to inhale.
“They saved us, Papa.” She giggled then pranced around me. I turned around.
It was not the rain the earth had answered me with but a cheering from my people gathered around the stilled feet of the Olifants, clapping and singing, decorating them with perfumes and flowers. My frown gave rise to a headache.
What of the hill? I strained to focus through tears. Several corpses of giant mechanical spiders hung over the rocks as Ma’s silk blanket used to over me.
Laughter boiled from my belly, sickly hot and unwelcome.
Ange threw her small arms around my neck. She squeezed, her body wet against my chest. And when she pulled away, her muddied yellow dress had stained red. She skipped and cheered at the sight, singing a melody of numbers from her head that only she knew.
I lowered my chin as she had done earlier and stared at the blunt end of a wooden shard buried within my chest.
Ange gripped her dress and wiped a finger across the stain, drawing one of the letters of Ma’s science. So innocent, at one with the world in all its beauty and horrors. Black fog crept over her and the world, slurred her sweet voice.
At least she was alive.
How wrong I was, how wrong we all were to think they couldn’t reach us here. To believe the Olifants were the only monsters walking the earth. They celebrated these beasts now, only from fright and relief, only because of the unfamiliar crossing the hills. It would not last and they’d remember why we had fled so long ago. But the future of our mistakes would redeem us. It was in Ange’s hands and those of her generation. I had faith, like what I remembered seeing in Ma’s eyes when she starting building our village. Faith, and hope.
I smiled, feeling Ange’s soft touch against my cheek, and drew in deep, bubbling breaths. I whispered to her, “No, you will save us.” And she would. She would see the terror for what it was, like my Ma had before her, and she’d rally our people to lead them. This was my prayer for her, my blessing and wish, delivered with the last of my life.
Her brown eyes darkened at my words, her smile melting away while she cupped my face. She wouldn’t cry again and those cheeks would stay covered in dirt. Children understood more than we gave them credit for, and they were not blind. Ange saw the destruction now, realised the cost of the Olifant victory, and she saw numbers. As my eyes rolled back into my head, my spirit heard her thoughts. I heard the melodies of her mind, felt the pressure of understanding and the weight of maths. I saw the cracking of her heart when my body became one with the soil.
But above all, I saw the colourful rays of hope burst from between those cracks, hardening the wounds, protecting her mind. The darkness flowing from her eyes swirled and wafted toward the Olifants, touching each person along the way. They turned to face her, their smiles and cheers dying with their submission, knowing now the truth. She would save them. We weren't safe here.
