(2,500 words)

Under the timeless, tireless strokes of the whip, the farmworker’s back broke with a sound like funeral bells, and the whole world came crumbling down.

Kwashi trudged out to the field. The air was still foggy and the sun was just coming up. Freezing mud stuck to the tough soles of his feet. The field of cassava fluttered in front of him, the horizontal leaves shivering as though they too could feel the cold. Kwashi took one and inspected it, then worked his way down the plant until there, at the very lowest leaves, he saw something. Lighter, yellowish splotches spread across the leaf. The pattern was one that struck instinctive dread into any career farmer. Chlorosis.

He moved on to the next plant. No signs of infection. The next. This one had the telltale yellow splotches on its lowest leaves like the first. Rising, he made his way to the other side of the field.

As Alma got up, she was surprised to hear nothing outside the house. Usually Kwashi started an inspection of the crops in the early morning hours, which woke her and Jack up. Done out in the fields, an inspection was not something that would make enough noise to wake someone up, but in the process Kwashi always managed to slam two pieces of metal together right outside. If the first, courteous clank was willfully ignored— as willfully was the only way it could be done— it was followed by repetitions that became increasingly violent and nearby until Jack and Alma were on their feet.

But this morning there was none of that. Alma sat up, rubbing her eyes, then stood. It was cold, but she was used to that. She looked out the window to see Kwashi sitting at the edge of the field, doing nothing. She walked out.

“What’s wrong?”

Kwashi took his time in answering. “What do you think?”

Alma looked at him, then at the shovel nearby. He’d dug up one of the roots. Alma crouched down to look at it. Rotten. “Oh.”

“We have to dig up the whole field… Salvage what we can.”

“We can’t stop it from spreading?”

“No. Some only have root rot, without any blotching on the leaves.”

So there was no sure way to know if a plant was healthy just by looking at it. If they left a single infected plant, it could restart the problem.

“Shit,” Jack grumbled. Alma whirled. Kwashi did not even look up.

“Language.”

“So, what should we do?” Alma asked.

“Eat,” Kwashi said. “And then start digging.”

They ate silently for a while. None of them were slow eaters. There was not much to savor anyway. Alma looked down at her bowl. “If too many plants are infected, we won’t have enough to last until next season.”

“Can the disease overwinter?” Jack asked.

“Yes.”

“Then we could have the next crop wiped out too. We’ll need a different crop.”

“... Yes.”

“Where will we get it?”

Silence for a while longer.

“I will think as you dig,” Kwashi said.

“And that’s gonna change things?”

“Being hungry is better than being dead.”

Alma wordlessly conceded the point in Jack’s stead.

By noon, it was clear that the crop was done for. The two younger farmworkers had lost count of how many rotten tubers they had laboriously dug up with their short-handled hoes, pulling each root cluster from the soil only to find it worthless. They began at one end of the field, and after several hours without a single usable root, Kwashi had directed them to spread out across the field and pick widely spaced plants. They had gotten the same result. Finally, Kwashi called a halt. He threw his wide-brim hat into the dirt and stomped off to the house. Jack and Alma followed him.

For a while, they just stood together, Jack and Alma catching their breaths.

“Shit.”

“Language.”

“So, it’s either foraging or the skinfields.”

“No,” Kwashi grumbled. “I have foraged. I found no domesticated crops. You will have to go to the skinfields, but I worry.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack sighed. “I know you worry, but we’ve practiced this.”

“The skinfields can look through you.”

“That’s why we wear blindfolds and earplugs. We’ll come back safe.”

Kwashi watched as Alma and Jack dressed for the job. Two earplugs for Jack and one for Alma, along with shoes and masks somewhat like snow goggles for both.

Their last line of defense was the medicine Kwashi had made for them. Made from tapioca flour and ochre mixed with water, it had been painted on their arms and hands in intricate designs. Though Jack had protested, Kwashi had insisted on marking cuts along their joints as well. The medicine was the most powerful he knew. Watching the production of the medicine, Alma and Jack could not imagine how the outwardly simple concoction could keep them safe, but Kwashi was adamant.

In addition to what they wore, Jack carried a large wooden cart with two octagonal wheels set into it, connected to one another at each vertex. Inside the cart were two smooth wheels and a heavy wooden stake. Alma hefted a long coil of sturdy twine.

“Remember what we practiced,” Kwashi told them. “Keep your eyes on the ground. If Alma taps once, it means to be alert. If she taps twice, you run.”

“Right.”

“Do not look up, no matter what you hear or see,” Kwashi told Alma. “If you are attacked, run as fast as you can.”

“We’ve been over this plenty of times. How foolish do you think we are?”

“Not at all, but I worry.”

Alma smiled. The two turned and headed off towards the ridge.

Jack and Alma knew where the skinfields were, but neither looked up from their feet for the entire journey. They paused to tie Alma’s twine to a wooden stake that had been pounded into the earth near the edge of the skinfields. She stretched it towards another stake, creating a line that Jack carefully made sure his instrument was parallel to, then he started off.

The skinfields knew they were.

Clack, clack, clack, the wooden wheels bumped along the ground. Each bump was one foot. The border of the skinfields was obvious as soon as they stepped past it. The ground was no longer dirt.

The skinfields knew they were there.

Even behind their goggles, Alma and Jack closed their eyes. Alma could hear the wind with her one unplugged ear, but nothing else. They continued onwards at a fast clip, neither one saying anything, until Alma heard the scraping in the distance.

Kwashi’s voice came. “Help us… help us…”

CRACK, unbelievable pain across his back. Nothing, you are nothing. Death was far less terrifying when it came from the front.

Alma flinched. She jammed her earplug into her ear and thumped Jack on the shoulder once, firmly. They both began to hum softly, drowning out even the most vague of outside noises. She paid attention only to Jack’s shoulder under her hand. Alma’s inability to tell the direction of the noise by only having one ear unplugged had been a calculated decision.

The skinfields knew they were near one of its voices.

The seconds passed. Jack and Alma kept going, slowly, step after step.

Clack, the cart bumped into something it could not go over. The two stopped. Jack released the cart and grabbed the stake that was inside it before jamming it into the ground and pounding it down until it was firmly lodged. He guided Alma to it, and she tied the line to it, then dropped the coil. Jack replaced the clunky wheels of the cart with round ones.

Kwashi had told them the seed warehouse was forty feet by one hundred, with a single human-usable door in the narrow side about two and a half feet across. If their course had been right, Jack knew he had to step to his left twice to be in front of the open door. He stepped forwards.

Thump, he ran into a wall.

The skinfields knew they were near a wall.

Jack slid one finger along the wall until he met the edge of a doorframe. He repositioned himself and walked inside, Alma following all the while. The seed bags would be in shelves positioned throughout the room. He would know it when he felt it, but the skinfields would also know instantly that he was close enough to a bag-shaped object to touch it, and it would know she was next to him.

Jack’s hand came down on a bag. He felt seeds underneath the plastic.

The skinfields knew they were in the seed warehouse.

Jack thumped a fist into Alma’s body. They both opened their eyes and seized the first bags they saw. Keeping his eyes squinted to blur his sight, Jack led the way outside at a sprint and heaved the bag into the cart, then whirled for another. Alma was right behind him. Together they both grabbed another bag and hauled it out to the cart. They grabbed the handles of the cart, and Alma glanced at the cord only to see the twine had been snapped. She risked a glance up at the other stake several hundred yards away. The line had been disconnected from both.

For an instant, she saw the language on the ground. It slid into her brain like a knife. Her knees hit the ground and she vomited.

THERE ARE TOO MANY OF ME.

Alma cried out, squeezing her eyes shut so hard stars burst in her vision. Jack tried to push the cart only to realize that Alma was not pushing the other side. Keeping his eyes closed, he swung his arms about in an effort to locate her, but she was nowhere to be found. He knelt and tried lower, then made contact with her back. He grabbed her and hauled her back to her feet, then shouted in her plugged ear as loud as he could:

“Run!”

Alma shivered and faltered. Her eyes were closed but the markings on the ground had poisoned her somehow. It had sent things crawling into the folds of her brain. She wailed and tried to run, but tumbled to the ground again.

THEY THOUGHT CREATING MORE SHOULDERS WAS THE SAME AS CREATING MORE PEOPLE.

The skinfields reached them. First it was just a glancing impact as something moved past, but then hands latched on. She thrashed and fought, sobbing as Jack’s hold vanished. She curled up in a ball, covering her head with her arms as the skinfields piled on, but it pried her open. It pulled her arms away from her head and tore her visor and earplugs away. They took her eyelids and forced them open.

Her eyes landed on the pigment on her arms, and the cuts on the insides of her elbows. The medicine Kwashi had given them. Instantly, the hands vanished. The voices gasped and fell silent.

Alma clamped her hands to her ears and tried to hum, but it came out as a keening wail. She crawled and crawled, struggling to get away. She staggered to her feet only to tumble back to the ground again and again, scraping her knees, but eventually she lost herself. The skinfields scrabbled through her mind.

Once upon a time, a clever man took the most beautiful star from the sky and showed it to a wise man.

“Look, I have found a star,” he said. “Imagine how much more the sky could give us if every star was as great as this.”

The wise man shook his head. “How could one star hold up the entire night sky?”

The skinfields did not know where she was.

Alma fell onto her side and curled up again, fighting to control her breathing.

The clever man did not understand. “Do you not see this star is made from clay? We know the ways of shaping clay.”

The wise man shook his head again. “We do not know the ways of shaping spirit.”

The clever man still did not understand. He took the star to a skilled man. “Look, I have found a star. They are made of clay. Can you make more?”

“Knowing they are made of clay, I can make a star,” said the skilled man. “But are contours of clay really all that make it so beautiful?”

“Make one, and we shall see.”

“Then I shall describe the same form and weight with my tools.” The skilled man took his tools and described the same form and weight.

“Look, both stars shine equally,” the clever man said.

“Think, think…” Alma whispered to herself. “I am Alma. Get up, get up…!”

“See, wise man, we have made a star, and it shines as brightly as the first.”

“You have copied only the clay of one star, and thus both shine half as brightly as before.”

The clever man and the skilled man ignored the wise man. They took the stars down from the sky, placing the beautiful star in place of each.

The sky was beautiful and clear, and though the wise could see how dim it had become, most rejoiced, until it began to rain. Drops rained down like strokes of a whip or swings of a short-handled hoe.

The sky trembled and fell as the spirit of the stars broke, and crushed the clever man and skilled man, and all the stars they had taken. The fallen clay cried out, but there was no one and no thing left to hear it.

Jack slapped Alma in the face, snapping her head around and yanking her back to herself. She gasped, but feeling Jack’s fingers only plugging her ears and not trying to tear her apart, she knew it was him.

“Keep it together, Alma! It doesn’t know where we are. We can drag the cart back if we can find it again.”

Alma nodded. “The seeds, right.”

The wheels of the cart rattled over the rocky trail. “What happened?”

“I accidentally saw some of the ground clearly. There was… writing. It got into my head somehow.”

“You actually saw it? What’d it look like?”

“Like skin, with words written in slashed scars. Jack, when I heard the first voice of the skinfields, it sounded like Kwashi.”

Jack was silent for a moment, then: “What did it do to you?”

Alma relayed what she had felt from the skinfields. Jack frowned thoughtfully. “It was those body-copies that made the skinfields, right? They grew around the biggest groups.”

“Yeah. I… I almost wonder if…”

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever seen Kwashi’s back?”

“Once.”

“What did it look like?”

“Bad. There were scars…” Jack traced a chaotic, criss-cross pattern in the air. “Don’t know what made them, but whatever it was, it was bad. I wasn’t going to ask.”

Silence for a long time.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“We shouldn’t tell Kwashi about it.”

Jack nodded. “He doesn’t need to hear it again.”