[Chilly day in January of 2119. Young woman in her early 30’s is sitting on a leather sofa. A journal is open on her lap. She twirls a ballpoint pen between her fingers. She begins to write.]

Jan. 21, 2119 -- It’s me, again. Surprise, surprise. Yesterday, I curled my hair, uncovered my makeup, and brushed my nails with an intense deep pink titled Flamin’ Flamingo. This morning, my appearance reminds me of a hungover college student on Sunday morning. My mascara smeared during the night and my eyes are bordered by shadows of dark powder. Half of my hair has completely lost it’s curl. The right side is totally flattened from sleeping. I haven’t thought about my appearance in years -- what’s the point anyways? I have no one to impress besides myself. Nicole took Pepper for a walk this morning, and Brendan is who knows where? He is probably playing video games, searching the net, or directing Thomas in the kitchen. I am quite worried about Brendan, and at this point I am not sure what to do. Last week he went crazy with the remotes and had a field day controlling Thomas and Pepper. He tired himself to complete exhaustion from chasing Pepper in circles, and Nicole had to search for the emergency portable battery pack in the attic. Honestly, I am at the point where I would consider pressing RED, but I am not sure if my heart can handle it.

[Pepper enters the living room.]

At least Pepper seems to be doing well. He is in bright spirits and is perfecting his treat searching skills. The other day, I was convinced that I had created the perfect hiding spot. Somehow, he was able to crack the code on the triple locked air bar in under 2 hours.

[Woman’s hand begins to shake slightly and the pen falls onto the journal. She picks up the pen.]

I feel myself becoming more and more exhausted each day. There are only 10 more pages left in this journal -- meaning over 200 have been filled. It’s almost time to add this one to the stack of journals accumulating on the old bookshelf in the bedroom closet. Sometimes I flip through them and re-live the times when I lived among the humans. The sketches, pictures, and entries give me a rush of so many emotions, and I miss Sarah, Jonathan, and Emily so much. I think about them everyday.

[Woman appears to be quite tired. Her eyes begin to close.]

Goodnight, journal. Please let this be the end. - Mira

[Woman slumps downwards into the couch. Pepper lifts his head and runs to her. He pulls a cord attached to her back and plugs it into the living room wall. The sound of whirring fills the house.]

The waters were still that morning, and the water tapped gently on the sides of the boat as it swayed from side to side. The coast of New Washington was faintly visible to the east, dry black mountains fading into gray. She watched a fish as big as her leg swim by below, shadowed by a handful of smaller darters. The anchor chain disappeared into the gloom -- she imagined it descending until eventually its teeth locked into sand and rocks some thousand feet below.

The bulk of the family was belowdecks, but Esaiah sat looking out at the land, his white head turned away from her. In his gnarled hands he held a small but very thick book -- his fingers obscured the title, but she knew that it read Clive's Almanac, and in smaller letters, More Years Than You Could Ever Need -- Every Day of Every Month of Every Year Through 2120 -- This Book Will Outlive You -- See The Future Through the Days of the Week -- When Will Your 99th Birthday Fall?

"You good, baba?" she said, scooting down the deck towards him. Far away, a distant cormorant circled.

He sighed deeply. "Soon we'll reach the end of the almanac." The book's binding had almost entirely disintegrated, and what was left of the colorful paper color was held on by patches of duct tape that ran along the spine and wrapped around the back like a shield.

"Can't you just start over from the beginning? It's like the same thing for a billion pages."

He looked mournfully out at the water. "Each year is off by a few days from any other. We'll start to lose our place... Slowly, month by month, we'll lose track of time..."

"Ignore him," Emila said, slowly seating herself next to Memma with a groan. "My back is not pleased with me... Esaiah, don't be such a downer. Why do you even have that thing out here?"

"You," he said, pointing a nobbled finger at her nose, "Are a bad daughter. What would mother say?"

"Probably, 'Eat some fish, have a drink, forget the past,'" Emila snapped. "Don't test me. I know what day it is."

Memma looked from one to the other. "What day is it?"

"It's not actually important," Emila shrugged.

"On the contrary, it is the most important." Baba looked downright irked now. "Today is Fire Day. And not just any Fire Day, but the one hundredth anniversary of the first Fire Day."

Memma knew vaguely what Fire Day was, but Avin, her mother, was adamant that it wasn't a topic little girls should learn about.

"What happened on the first Fire Day?" she asked slyly.

Emila gave her a sideways glance, the corner of her mouth quirking up, and did a quick scan of the deck: Avin was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't know if I should..." Baba began hesitantly.

"Oh, tell her, Esaiah. She's practically as tall as you are."

"She is not," he said strictly. "Sunshine, it is not a nice story."

"I can handle it," she said, trying her best at a solemn expression.

"Well, just don't tell your mother." He sighed and resettled himself on the deck. "Can I have a pillow?"

Memma jumped up, pulled a pillow out of the storage chest, and threw it in his direction. It would have gone in the water had Emila not caught it, but as it was she settled it behind him and he prepared for the story.

"Many years ago, when this book was newly printed," he began, tapping the cover of the almanac, "Everything was going to shit. People were -- to say the least -- desperate and miserable. Communities were breaking down, people were killing each other, and even the land was shifting and collapsing into the sea. It was a bad, bad time."

"Was this when Gran was born?"

"Yes, Gran herself was a little girl when this was going on, god rest her soul. Now at this time -- this may be hard to believe, but I swear on the almanac it's true -- people were everywhere on the land. You could hardly walk ten miles without running into somebody. And they built mountains of metal needles to live in, and traveled a great deal. In some ways it was a great time. The things those people built, from what Gran told me..."

He drifted off into reflection for a moment. The water lapped at Memma's toes and she wiggled them impatiently, not wanting to interrupt and risk the story ending there.

"Fire Day," Emila prompted.

"Yes, right. So in this crowded land world, there came upon the land a great sickness. Some people call it the Fever, or Fire Fever, but that sounds like a dance craze in my opinion. In any case, a sort of plague began to spread person to person. And each of them and all of them developed a peculiar thirst to destroy what made them miserable.

"For a time it was contained: there was some low-level smashing and rioting, individual arson. But the farther it spread the more it grew, until hundreds of thousands took to the streets and set on fire anything that could burn. And still more people caught the sickness, and across the world the cities and towns and houses burned, and people dropped fire from the sky, and the very land caught aflame, and this passion gripped the people of the earth until everything that would burn had burned and the few still alive were left in an ashy blankness.

"Gran -- your mother's grandmother -- was only a little girl when all this came to pass. As the fever spread her mother and father brought as much food and water as they could and took to the ocean in a tiny boat, touching shore only when they needed to restock. In all of this the sea proved more fertile than the land, and eventually they learned to feed themselves and live only on the water. And so when the burning ended they shunned the desecrated coastline, and found others who had also survived on the water, and for decades we have prevailed -- right down to you, Memma.

"This day, Fire Day, marks the day one hundred years ago when the fever began to spread."

Memma looked out at the distant black mountains. It was difficult to image the blasted terrain of New Washington full of dry green seaweed and fish that walked like people.

"Well," Memma said hesitantly after a moment, "It seems like we're doing pretty good, all things considered."

Baba flicked the back of her head. "We prevail. Don't tell your mother."

The distant cormorant swooped and rose again with a fish thrashing wildly in its beak. What was it like, she wondered, to hate the world so much that you burned all you could to ash?

All of the saddest things are here. They fill the walls and spill out from under the pages. They cover the darkness and hold open your eyes. There’s nothing but black. There’s an absence more immense than the darkness. You’re holding on and letting go, and you’re not sure which. Stumbling and floating. And it’s all numb. And it’s all pressure. You can feel the energy of all of the memories. You may have broken it. You may not fix it. And you can feel all of the wrong choices. You can feel your heart touching the air when it should be in its cage. It’s being swallowed. It’s smothering. It’s drowning. It’s razing. It’s an ebb and flood. There is darkness. There is sadness. There are wet eyes and dry ones. There are closed lungs and torn apart hearts. And there is darkness. And there is sadness. Dancing. And growing. And in the distance, a deep glow. If you could only reach it. There is ebb, and there is flood. And that glow. If you could only reach it. Until it is smothering. And if you could only reach it. The glowing ebb of a flood. Strangling your breath. But for the glow. If you could only reach it.

"Away from the fog, away from the mist,

away from the cry of what you most miss.

Away from temptation, away from the wall,

away from the senseless desire to fall.

Tread carefully, my child, walk away from the shore,

stay here, with me, think of yonder nevermore."

---------

Elijah chokes on his dreams. He thrashes upright, eyes flashing open as he wakes, blinking until the shadows clear and light enters his vision. The front of his thin shirt is soaked through with sweat.

The limbs of a honey locust tree hush in the wind above his head, pale green sunlight filtering down to dapple the backs of Elijah’s hands, the bare length of his legs, the tanned skin over his arms.

It’s disorienting — the breeze, the cry of birds, the sun on his face — until he remembers. He had collapsed here last night, sheltered under the curve of this tree. He had run from the cries of his mother, the curses of his father, the tightened fists and harsh words and empty beer bottles in the sink.

As his breathing slows down, as his chest stops rising and falling with a rapid desperateness, Elijah reaches for the dregs of the nightmare that had woken him.

He had been running. Running across soft ground unlike the hardness beneath him, soft ground that gave way so easily beneath his feet, making each stride a battle. It had been dark, and cold, the sun missing from the sky, the wind howling in his ears like a wounded animal. Whatever had been chasing him had caught up. Elijah had become one of the shadows, swallowed and buried until he had forgotten who he was.

Elijah shivers despite the heat. He remembers the very end of his dream, the lilting rhyme he knew so well that had filled up the empty spaces of himself, that had made the darkness seem that much more real as it had crept into his lungs and heart and mind.

"Tread carefully, my child, walk away from the shore…"

The same rhyme that the younger children sing on the playground as they jump rope. The same rhyme that his mother hums on good days when she’s got the windows open and her hair up, stroking the piano keys she loves so much. The same rhyme that is inscribed anywhere it is necessary — in the hospital, at the beginning of every book, hanging in a friend’s kitchen on a custom-made plaque.

Elijah swallows past the terrible dryness of his throat. Around him a forest of honey locusts and white oaks and red maples sway and dance, their branches tangling together above him like fingers interlocking over bowed heads during Sanctuary.

"Sanctuary."

The thought hits him suddenly, panic shooting straight and true through his heart. He scrambles to his feet. Today is Sanctuary and he can’t be late, no matter the cost.

Elijah begins to run, his sneakers finding hard, unforgiving soil this time as he flies through the trees.

---------

Elijah’s mother is a porcelain doll beside him. Her face is powder smooth, her lips a beautiful red, her golden hair coiled and piled on her head with practiced ease, a few curls escaping and framing the elegant lines of her face.

To anyone sitting around them, Elijah thinks, she must look like a queen.

To him, her son, she looks like a woman who’s been dragged from her throne, locked up in a tower surrounded by chains and thorns and hard fists. A queen without her crown, enshrouded in lies and pretense as she covers her bruises and cuts with makeup, as she keeps her frail shoulders straight even though Elijah sees the flinch in her eyes every time his father shifts beside her.

Elijah bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood, hates himself for how perfectly still he has become over the years, a prince of silence. He’s still just the little boy cowering behind his mother’s legs, running to the trees for comfort while his mother braves the storm on her own.

"Coward," his brain whispers. "You deserve this life."

Elijah jerks himself away from the poison of his thoughts as the crowd around them rustles and shifts, a low murmur going through the room like the sigh of the wind in the treetops. The Provider has arrived right on time, her crimson skirts rustling around her ankles as she moves to the front of the room, turning until she is facing the rest of the village. The sunlight streaming in from the windows behind her throws her features into shadow, casts a reddish glow at her feet.

Elijah is reminded of his nightmare, of the shadows curling inky fingers around his throat.

His mother turns to him slightly, as if she can feel it, the sudden renewal of fear in his bloodstream. But Elijah doesn’t meet her eyes. She bears enough weight on her shoulders and Elijah can smell the faint scent of rum on her breath.

She only ever smells like that when the pain is too much, when it needs to be dulled.

Instead Elijah stands with the others on shaking knees as the Provider raises her gloved hands.

"Away from the fog, away from the mist…" The voice of the crowd rises up to the rafters — solid, firm, unwavering. From here Elijah imagines he can see the lips of the Provider curve with satisfaction, pleased with her children and their obedience.

The words of their ancestors ring up to the high ceilings. They are the truth they all live by. They are the key to the ongoing success and happiness of this village, of the towns and villages and cities that surround it, of the small nation they all belong to. Every child is raised with this truth, spoon-fed the stories that are there to warn and protect them.

There are monsters out there, past the rolling fog that encompasses the edges of The Boundary. The crash and roar of them is forever present if you dare to go close enough to the towering, ivory wall of swirling mist to listen.

There are people out there too, Elijah has been told. People who are unlike others, who are different and wrong and frightening. People who try to send their mothers and children across The Boundary with the pretense of needing aid when they are really just trying to encroach and feed off of the livelihood this village has worked so hard to build. Dangerous people who would not hesitate to murder.

Elijah believes in monsters. One of them sleeps under his roof. One of them lives side-by-side with him. One of them leaves empty glass bottles of whiskey and rum in his wake, leaves blood and blooms of bruises in his fury, leaves intimidation and fear and persuasion sitting guard at their doorstep.

His Provider preaches of the freedom they are all so lucky to have, here within their walls of smoke. But Elijah knows only of the entrapment of his father, of the shackles that he wraps around his mother’s wrists, of the sticky-sweet alcohol on his breath when his eyes are wild and crazy and filled with a fury that Elijah doesn’t know how to put out.

And how is he supposed to escape? How is his mother supposed to seek help when the Provider and their neighbors expect his family to plaster on plastic smiles and cover wounds with blush and nod and act as if everything is perfect?

"… stay here, with me, think of yonder nevermore."

Elijah sits back down. The Provider begins to talk. He doesn’t hear the words.

If him and his mother tried to ask for help — if they threw away all pretense of being perfect and put together the way a proper, obedient family like theirs should be — what would happen? He has lied awake and stared at the cracks in his ceiling for hours before, trying to find a way out.

Would his father be held accountable or would the Court find his mother responsible, a woman inciting the rightful wrath of her husband, bringing it on herself?

Elijah has seen it happen before, when he had been too young to fully understand. He knows what would happen if they failed in their pleas. If they lost, Elijah’s mother would be sent to the other side of The Boundary, exiled to live with the monsters and with the crippling fear of the unknown. Elijah would be left with his father and his punches.

Cool fingers wrap around Elijah’s, breaking him from his thoughts. The soft voice of the Provider filters back into his ears. His mother’s hand is strong and steady around his own.

Elijah holds tight.

He thinks he can hear the rage of monsters from here and their growls match the tempo of his heart.

---------

The boy and woman hidden in the shadows of the white oak do not see Elijah.

He stops dead in his tracks, a palm still cradling the bruised and swollen skin of his jaw as if his fingers can hold in all of the pain in his bones — as if they can hold back all of the fury and shamefulness that burn through his bloodstream and bloom in his stomach, growing up and up and up until he chokes on it all.

Elijah recognizes both figures immediately, despite the shadows thrown by the trees in the late-night, muggy air.

Adrian and Adalie Baldred, adopted son and adopting mother.

Adrian, the boy who had lost both of his parents so young. Adalie, who had immediately stepped forward to take in the orphan even though her hair had turned white long ago, even though time had begun taking its toll on her body.

Adrian, the boy who loves his books. Adalie, who could almost always be found out in her garden at the back of her house — back near where her two stillborn children were buried.

Adrian, the boy who has always been… different. The boy who had used to wear pretty skirts and dresses around the village. The boy who had grown his raven-colored hair out before the Provider and the others had forced him to cut it — before they had turned him into a public humiliation and had burned the clothes he clutched so close.

He had been too young to be exiled, but he hadn’t been enough of a child in the eyes of the law to avoid the shackles in the center square, or the days of being chained up out in the open — exposed to the rain and the biting wind and the harsher, sharper words and sneers of the people who passed him by.

Adalie had watched on in silence, had let Adrian suffer the consequences without a trace of regret on her wrinkled face, hand-in-hand with the Provider.

But now… Elijah inhales quietly at the sight before him.

Adalie sits with her back to the oak tree, a book in her hands, reading with a content smile on her face. And Adrian…

Adrian lies sprawled out in the grass at her feet, gazing up at the burning, star-filled sky, a beautiful yellow dress pooling around his figure.

They’ve both aged over the four years that have passed since those days of torture, the days that Elijah has tried to forget because his heart had ached strangely back then for the bowed head in the center square, for the broken lines of Adrian’s shoulders that had looked so much like the broken eyes of Elijah’s mother.

Adrian is now eighteen, just like Elijah. He performs his duties like the rest of them, goes to school, keeps his eyes downturned. Elijah hasn’t seen him in any pretty silks or patterned cloths in years. Ever since those days four years ago Adrian has seemed watered down, muted, a boy built of shadows and paper and the quiet hush of raindrops.

And yet here he is now, suddenly much clearer in Elijah’s eyes, more vivid and alive than he’s ever been.

Elijah holds his breath, heart racing in his chest. He watches, unsure of what else to do, watches as Adrian says something to Adalie that Elijah can’t make out, watches as she lowers her book to tip her head back to look at the spot in the sky that Adrian is raising a hand to point to. Elijah watches her smile widen, watches her laugh and say something and then watches as she turns a look of such blatant adoration and love and kindness onto the child before her that Elijah’s heart wrenches almost agonizingly in the cage of his ribs.

Gone is the woman who had watched in silence. Gone is the woman who had listened to Adrian’s pleas without mercy. Here is the woman who had maybe been protecting the child she loved like her own in the only way she could.

Elijah clutches his battered face in the shadows and can’t help but think that Adrian is free out here in the trees, shielded away from the cruelty of his own people and surrounded by nothing but the ancient silence of the oaks and maples and honey locusts, exposed to nothing but love and kindness, a step towards an acceptance of differences.

Elijah steps back, melting away into the shadows. He steps back towards the imprisonment of his father and his hatred.

And he wonders how free any of them truly are, trapped here in their walls of fog.

---------

Elijah has bitten his nails down until his fingers bleed. His hands, dug into the hard soil to break his fall, are stained at the fingertips with the same color of the Provider’s robes.

The Provider with her ruby-red lips and cold gray eyes and a voice that scares Elijah more than the crash and roar of the monsters beyond The Boundary.

The Provider who had cost Elijah his mother.

Elijah had tried — and he had lost. His mother had been exiled. His father’s fists had tightened. And now, a year later, Elijah runs.

He wrenches himself up from the ground from where he had tripped and fallen over a tree root, the air in his lungs burning with the saltiness of the wind this close to the edge of the line none of them are ever supposed to cross. This close, Elijah can hear the gigantic rumble of what lies beyond, can see the wall of mist and smoke rising before him through the gaps in the trees.

He throws himself forward with the echoes of a poem in his ears.

"Away from the fog, away from the mist…"

The ground is growing softer beneath his shoes, giving way. Elijah remembers a nightmare from before, of shadows swallowing him up until he faded away — but the darkness does not reach for him here. Instead the sky above him is turning pale gold, lightening as the sun rises from the horizon.

"Away from the cry of what you most miss…"

"Mother," Elijah thinks, stumbling again and righting himself, pushing forward.

"Away from temptation, away from the wall…"

The trees begin to thin out, growing farther and farther apart. Elijah’s breath runs ragged in his throat, his battered ribs ache. For some reason Adrian and Adalie’s faces flash before his eyes as bright yellow sunlight begins to spread its rays across the ground.

"Away from the senseless desire to fall…"

Soil no longer meets Elijah’s footfalls. He’s running across something lighter and looser, something that threatens to give way beneath him and leave him falling forever. He pays it no heed, not now — now when the wall is right before him, rising and rising, curling and coiling into the pale blue air.

"Tread carefully, my child, walk away from the shore,

stay here, with me, think of yonder nevermore."

Elijah skids to a stop right before it, his chest heaving. His dark hair curls in the mist, in the odd, salty, muggy air. His shoes sink through the ground. His ribs ache with the weight of his father’s blows and his heart throbs for his mother’s face.

The wall is forever moving, changing, shifting and Elijah looks at it with something akin to wonder instead of fear.

He doesn’t know what lies beyond. He doesn’t know if there are monsters with their sharp teeth bared or people who are just as dangerous. He doesn’t know a lot of things — whether his mother is still alive, if his father will ever look for him, if the Provider will send out a team to bring him back.

Elijah doesn’t even know if Adrian will ever find the three words he had carved into the trunk of a honey locust in the forest a few weeks ago — his farewell parting to a boy who also asked the trees to protect his secrets.

But Elijah knows he has to leave.

He reaches out, threads his fingers through the coils of fog, watches his skin disappear behind it and holds tight to himself.

As the mist encompasses him, as the strange air fills his lungs and dampens the anger in his stomach, the poem in Elijah’s head fades away, sucked back into the darkness of the tree line behind him.

Three words take its place. Three words that he had left for Adrian and all of the others who would need them.

Freedom is kindness.

Elijah steps forward.