Daily Flashfic #2: The parable of the chalice

Original URL: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gisho/60879.html

Just to the back of the town was a garbage dump. The kids played there, no matter what they were told, and when the weather grew overcast they carried torches, old wrenches mostly, wrapped in rags dipped in oil. This was their secret, and as they grew older the shame of the place overcame the wonder and they forgot it, scabbed it over in their minds. Some went there in the evenings and made love inside the abandoned cabinets, but even those went away to school and, if they returned to the town, did not return to the dump.

This happened long before that, though. Beyorn was the leader of the children, although she was not the eldest. She wore a checked jacket that had been her mother's and always carried bits of wire in the pockets. Sometimes she would lead an expedition into the parts of the dump that had not been explored, or not in that generation, and brought back the things they found there. The evening she found the chalice, it was almost raining, and only the only children there were herself, her brother, and two girls called Tahn and Tasha who were so small the sum of their heights was not equal to her brother's. It was Tahn who noticed it first; she often did. It was Beyorn who saw it for what it was.

She picked it up with both hands, reverentially, and gazed at the accumulation of rainwater. She announced her discovery, and at her brother's suggestion they moved it to a place where six broken timbers stood around like the pillars of a temple, and an upended garbage can waited in the center for a pedestal. Beyorn held it always with both hands; it was too wide to balance on one without danger of the rainwater spilling. "Tahn looks first," she said, "for she saw it first."

Her brother had to hold Tahn up to the level of the pedestal. She gasped, and Tasha whimpered in fear and almost dropped her torch. "I'm going to be Mayor," she announced in her piping voice, and lifted a hand to her face, dislodging her curls. "I'll be very happy, and everyone will like me, and when I retire they'll plant a sugar maple in front of the library and name it after me." She beamed, and clapped her hands together, and Beyorn nodded and gave her a bit of red wire twisted into the shape of a heart.

Tasha went next, handing her torch back to Tahn, who waved in in the air and watched the sparks dance like fireflys. She stood on a crate. "I will be a doctor," she said. "And I'll make a lot of people feel better, but none of them will really know how to deal with me, and eventually I'll start doing research instead and have lots of cats but not too many human friends." She nodded and climbed down, looking a little scared but determined, and took her torch back. Her hair slid into her face and she made no move to push it away.

Beyorn fiddled with a bit of green wire and her brother, who looked just like her but taller and already with the wisps of a beard, held up his torch and stared into the chalice. "Uncle," he said, and Tasha and Tahn stared uncomprehending at his smile. "I'll make quilts, and bake pies, and all the children will call me Uncle." He stepped back and gave Beyorn an impulsive hug, with the hand not holding the torch. "You next."

Beyorn looked for a very long time. When she had fnished, she did not tell anyone what she had seen, but tipped the rainwater out of the chalice and set it back on the pedestal upside-down. "Let's go home," she told them. This frightened them, for Beyorn never before had suggested they go home before full darkness. "I'm tired."

Her brother trailed behind her as she formed a wire into the shape of a star, and dropped it outside their door.

They did not return to the spot with the pedestal for months, and when they did the upturned chalice was declared a target and they flung rings at it until they tired of the sport and went off to the place where the cabinets lay, ready for a game of hide-and-seek.