Read Online Engines of the Broken World by Jason Vanhee - Free Book Online

of age, though I didn’t know for sure. When I was very small, she still had a pa and was being courted by Benjamin Cally, who was dead these two years now. She wasn’t much of a looker, thickset and with hair of no particular color or fineness, but then, there weren’t too many choices around neither.
    “The fog was cold as a witch’s tit,” she said, and I like to laughed, only it wasn’t in me right then, so I held it back, “and there wasn’t no sound that came into or out of it. After just a few yards, I didn’t even see any snow falling, though it was thick on the ground still. A deer went right past me, so close I could have reached out and touched it, heading out of the fog. But there was something wrong with it, sure as there’s something wrong with me now. It had a patch missing on the flank that faced me.”
    “A patch of hair?” I asked, and it seemed like it was exactly what she wanted, because instead of cursing at me or somesuch, she smiled.
    “No, not of hair. Just a patch, like it was a kid’s drawing only someone stopped coloring. Nothing there. Not meat or bones or anything, just blankness. I can’t describe it no better than that, and I know that don’t make much sense, but it’s all I’ve got to tell about the deer. Now why I didn’t just get the heck out of there right then I don’t begin to know. I’ve always been contrary, so I suppose I went contrary to myself. I pushed right on ahead into that there fog even though I knew, I knew right from the top of my head to the tips of my toes that it was wrong and I shouldn’t have been there.
    “It was only another couple minutes, maybe, till I realized I couldn’t see any more tree trunks, even though I was past that clear rocky patch and in among the woods. Or I should’ve been. No trees, and the ground wasn’t seeming exactly white anymore, just … well, not white. Like a not-color, but I know that still doesn’t make any sense if you ain’t seen it. And it was then that I started to get a little troubled, or a lot troubled, because I guess I’d been a little troubled all the while, and I turned and started back. Only that no-color ground was slow to cross and seemed to get thicker, because I must have been pretty far into the fog, and then I … well, I can’t say I heard something. I suppose it felt like there was some pressure, and I turned to look over my shoulder—”
    “Your left shoulder?” I said, perking up on the rug.
    “My left. I kind of twisted about as I hurried, pushing my feet forward, and that was when I realized I just didn’t have an arm anymore. It didn’t hurt. I didn’t even feel anything. I guess that’s the whole point: I didn’t feel a thing, only when I looked forward again there wasn’t no arm at all. Nor an ear, but I didn’t realize that for a bit longer. I pushed harder than I’ve pushed ever, and I moved my legs by sheer cussedness and will, and I got out of that fog, only it was right near my house then. I didn’t dare go in for anything more, so I just started on down the hill. I come toward here because you’re all I know. My pack was flying loose half the time since there was nothing on my left to keep it in, and I realized I couldn’t hear so well and that’s when I noticed my ear was just gone, vanished.” She was crying then, not anyplace but her eyes, just tears coming down, though her voice didn’t change and she didn’t move at all. Only she leaked out tears the whole time while she was talking, and I didn’t blame her a bit. I thought she was real brave, actually.
    “And with me only partway down the mountain, there comes Gospel up the hill with a path beat down in the snow from where he’d walked. And we hurry back down, with him not even asking any questions till we get here, and now I’ve told him, and now I’ve told you, and I don’t want to talk about it no more if that’s quite all right.” And she took up her teacup with her right hand and had a sip,