Dreamers of the Red Moss (Part 2)
[Part I]
Life After Calydonia
They considered building a home for themselves in the woods. But it was hard to be sure which land baron owned what piece of land at that point. Squatting on someone’s property could get you into trouble. After a three-day journey through the mountains and forest, they successfully arrived in Briarwood Mills where they moved in with Jane’s parents. It was the first time Grace met her grandparents.
Jane was afraid that Ben or some of the Calydonians would come for Grace. She armed up with her old hunting rifles and got ready to show them who was boss, if anyone cared to ask. They didn’t. No one came looking for them.
She was sure that Grace’s transition to public school was going to be challenging. Her daughter had lived a sheltered, enlightened life in nature, communing with the fox and the heron and the ring-necked snake. But Grace was -- as always -- an instant leader, and she not only excelled academically but also worked with faculty and fellow students to navigate the emerging societal challenges of red moss addiction. She was a shining light amidst the rural-urbanist decay.
Jane got a job waiting tables at a cafe-gallery built out of an old paper mill. Two years after their escape from Calydonia, Ben took a seat at a corner table and ordered a glass of grapefruit juice from his estranged wife. She clutched a steak knife under her apron, ready to stab him in the throat at any moment.
He was a broken man, in far worse shape than she’d ever seen him. His Black Bear frame had shrunk down to skin and bone. His eyes were hollow and tired. He told her about how he had been kicked out of the homestead by Baron Mike a year earlier. He had slipped into a moss bog one day and spent three months there before waking up after what felt like a short nap. “I really lost myself, went down deep,” he said and apologized to Jane. After that experience he challenged Baron Mike on all of it, what they were doing with red moss, what had gone down with his family. The Baron told him to fuck off and kicked his ass out. Live your own shitty narrative away from my serene habitat. Don’t tell me my utopia ain’t working. End of dilemma.
This was the prevailing wisdom of the moment. The land barons’ self-idolizing communities were well established and had developed widely ranging belief systems—systems that were beginning to come at odds with others, both from inside their ranks and out, against other barons. Violent fights between groups were happening. Local law enforcement found themselves ill equipped to handle the regional skirmishes. Bribes were common to keep officials looking the other way. The FBI was around, playing the sides. Things had only mellowed because a few of the bigger barons (including Mike) had militarized and in some cases created special forces units. Everyone was shit scared of some diabolical tyrannical rampage by one of the big barons -- which would lead to war -- so homesteaders kept cool for a while.
That day at the restaurant Jane made Ben promise that he wouldn’t come around again. He was not to see Grace until she was old enough, and then only if she wanted to see him. Which she didn’t.
Ben found his way back into a trucking job with a baron in Vermont, a few hours away, and moved into weapons and logistics when the opportunity opened up. Gun running made him enough money to buy twenty acres and he set up shop as a warlord. At that point, he was just looking for peace and quiet. And a shot at redemption with his family. But with all of the land battles happening, you had to be aligned with some powerful group or you didn’t stand a chance, and they’d call on you to step in and support them when shit was going down. That’s what warlords do. Ben had to kick ass sometimes on the battlefield.
He was pretty good at it. He had three sixteen-wheeler trucks and each one was outfitted with armor, a communications system, and weaponry. When Black Bear rolled onto the field of combat he’d let the air horn ring, and enemies knew they were in for a handful. After many battles and many more border skirmishes, he got injured and nearly died. Took a crossbow bolt to the upper leg that nicked an artery. He slowed down and sold off the trucks, reinvesting his funds in a top-shelf home security system. He had more cameras and booby traps covering his modest property than you’d find in any of the large barons’ kingdoms.
Ben got back to the simple things. Farming and raising livestock. Every spring he planned to make a trip back to Briarwood Mills. To visit Jane. Or even just glimpse her, at a distance. He was dying to see Grace. He imagined her as a grown woman, as beautiful as her mother. But self-doubt and self-loathing kept him from ever making that trip.
Once a Family
Seven years after he’d last seen Jane, she showed up at his farm. Ben was asleep. When he woke up, she was standing over him. She had navigated five motion sensors, a field of landmines, a pit of asps, a fire wall, and a sonic destabilizer before breaking into his house undetected.
“Damn, you still got it,” he said as he sat up and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to look handsome for her.
“I just take my time and look at things before moving ahead. You rush in, you get messed up.”
“Kind of like us,” Ben said.
“Yeah.” She gave him a smile. Sat down on the end of his bed. Ben started crying.
“I’m such an asshole,” he said.
“You were under the hold of something wicked,” Jane said. “I’m past that now. I’ve moved on.”
He could tell from her voice that she wasn’t in love with him. In that moment, he realized that the reason he hadn’t sought her out was because he had been afraid to learn that she truly did not love him anymore. If he didn’t see her and feel the love loss for himself, he could always hold out hope. Here she was. It was gone. He felt like his chest was tearing open, and a million fiery vapors were running out through the hole there.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“Everyone knows about the warlord Black Bear. He’s the mightiest in the land.”
“How is Grace?”
Jane’s face shifted, taking on a stoic gravity. She seemed deeply pained at the mention of their daughter and had to work hard to keep it together. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, unfolding it and reading to Ben.
Dear Mom,
Life at Calydonia is more remarkable than I can express. My return has been revelatory, and I’m doing work now that’s good and lasting. You need to see it for yourself.
I was wrong about the moss all of those years. It’s transforming lives in ways that are healthy and meaningful. We should have never left Calydonia. We would still be a family. I don’t blame you. It was my decision to leave too. I just understand that it was a mistake now.
In a few weeks I’m going to be marrying Baron Mike, with five other women. After the ceremony, we will unify in the red moss and move into a splendorous garden that Mike has created. We will live our lives in the moss. If you would like to come see me, our resident shaman, Cloipen, will assist you with moss immersion. The process takes a month. I would love for you to visit! Mike isn’t mad at all for us leaving years ago. He says that everything has worked out just as it should. I agree.
Love,
Grace
Jane folded the letter back up. Ben stood and shouted, smashing his fist into the wall until it bled. Jane moved from his room and into the kitchen, where she fixed them some tea.
When Ben joined her he was still in a state of enraged shock. Jane handed him the tea. “Drink that,” she said. After a few sips, he started to mellow out.
“The wedding is tomorrow. We’re going to get our daughter. We will extract her. And then we’re going to burn Calydonia to the ground.”
Ben shook his head in admiration and said, “All right.”
They loaded Jane’s motorcycle into the back of his old truck. The drive was three hours. They stuck to the highway through Briarwood Mills. Their plan was simple. They’d take the rig up the Golden Road to a lake area that was two miles south of the bottom section of Calydonia. Where the red moss fields were located. They’d access the homestead there.
Ben had heard that most of Calydonia was overgrown with red moss now, an infestation, and that the spores had become aggressive. “They’ll attach to you if you get within three feet of them.” They’d have to make their way through the farm, maybe further, in protective biosuits.
“And there will be other kinds of natural defenses.” Ben trailed off.
Jane pressed him. “I need to know what we’re up against,” she said.
“I’ve heard stories from men on the battlefield. Of a giant buck. With a fifty-point crown of horns. He roams the property outside of the main compound. Eats men alive.”
Jane laughed. “I’ll drop that big deer like a sack of flour.”
Ben shook his head. “Not this deer,” he said. “The buck is different. It can move from place to place in the blink of an eye. Go invisible or some shit.”
She wasn’t afraid. He was. But neither of them were deterred.
When they got to the lake off of the Golden Road they could see some light moss already taking hold. “They must be letting it grow outside of the property now,” Ben said as they helped each other don their suits.
“Or spreading it on purpose,” Jane replied. The surface of the lake was covered in a thin red film. It would only be a matter of weeks before it blossomed into a full-grown moss bog. Ben stared at it, licking his lips. He was tempted to jump right into the lake and never come out. Jane kicked him in the shins, snapping him out of his daze, and said, “Let’s go.”
It was nearly midnight before they made it to the mountain peak above Calydonia Valley, and they decided to wait until sunrise to move over the border. The red moss was already heavy around them, so staying in their suits was the prudent call.
They sat next to each other and stared at the low-hanging crescent moon in the sky, the cosmos arranged in a manner similar to that of the first night they met. “For years I wished I was in the red moss hallucinating and didn’t even know it. That you would come and wake me up,” Ben said.
Jane was quiet. He asked her why Grace had gone back to Calydonia.
“She was doing really well. Had started a recovery group for moss addicts. Even got some funding from the state. But then someone burned down the clinic she was working out of. And a few weeks after that, she met a guy who said that they were planning to set up an addiction and learning center at Calydonia. Would she be interested in running that? It was all just a trick to get her back on the property. She didn’t tell me she was going to visit there. I knew she missed her friends from childhood. Once she was back, she never left. I only knew she was there because she sent me a birthday card with Calydonia as the return address. I drove over to see her and a shaman met me at the gates. He said she was in a silence retreat or some bullshit and made me leave. A month later she came to visit me and was very stern and clear. She said, I’m in control and I’m learning. No one is forcing me to do anything. You need to trust that I have the right intention here. We will come out on top. Trust me.” Jane threw a handful of dirt at the ground. “She’s twenty-five now. What the hell was I supposed to do? I tried to talk her out of it. She kept saying trust me. So I did.”
Ben rubbed Jane’s shoulder. She leaned into him. She removed her helmet first, and then his. Leaving them off long enough to share a single, deep, magnetic kiss. The moss residue was in the air. Ben just wanted to fall into it. But there was work to do. Jane pushed him back and said, “Part of me always knew we’d end up back here somehow.”
At sunrise they cut down from the high elevation along a riverbed. They each carried a hunting rifle, with a pair of pistols holstered around their hips. Running down through the fields of friscalating, red-tinged plant life felt magical, in spite of the circumstances. Like they were being born into another world. A world which they had had a hand in creating. And were now coming home to destroy.
[Part 3]