porcelain

Winter reluctantly surrendered its grip on the land, as spring made tentative inroads from the south. The ice floes were gone, but the water of the Great Lake remained deathly cold. Grey surf washed over the grey pebbles of the beach. Beyond the border of sodden stones, patches of snow hid in the shadows of the pine forest. The needles of the trees were silhouetted by the dawn, leaving the shore in semi-darkness. The villagers were already labouring in the quickening light of another morning. It was April now, probably, though no one knew for sure. The lengthening days were often obscured by clouds, making it hard to judge how near the equinox stood — for as much as anyone cared. There were no calendars in the village, with a single exception: an old advertiser, its curled pages a decade or more out of date, hung on the doorpost of the old greenhouse. Its pages depicted flowers which these days rarely bloomed. The pictures reminded the gardener of better times, so he kept it hanging, flipping its faded pages as the seasons turned and as his mood moved him. 
A short walk from the village, a young man plodded laboriously along the rough shore. Across his shoulders, he carried a yoke, from the ends of which dangled empty crates. As he trudged across the pebbles, he looked down the beach, and paused. The body must have washed up during the night. The child was nude, and lay neatly with her legs straight and her arms at her sides; her pale skin was luminescent in the rising dawn. The icy lake washed gently over her ankles and calves. 
Caleb Stone laid down his yoke. He knelt beside the body and touched its cheek with his palm. The flesh was as cold as the rocks beneath his rubber waders. He leaned closer, listening, feeling a faint breath. Caleb leaned back on his haunches. The child's pale skin and brown hair resembled no one from the village. She seemed only to be sleeping, but a firm shake on the shoulder would not rouse her. Caleb gently lifted the child and turned towards the village. 
Ruth Bowman had been tracking a buck when she noticed two feet protruding from a melting snow drift. Beneath the snow lay a boy, neatly arranged as if put to bed by a loving parent. When she dug free his face, the child exhaled deeply, as if he had been holding his breath. His thin arms were arranged across his chest, as if to keep warm. She lifted his chill body and lashed it to the travois she had stashed nearby, for hauling her kill back to the village. 
By midday more than a dozen ashen children lay swaddled in blankets and quilts in the old church house. Croatoan had never had its own doctor; back when the phone lines worked, the villagers would call the nearest town, and make their way along the narrow peninsula to see a physician. But it had been seven years since the last telephone rang. Since then, the village veterinarian had served as well as he could. He moved from child to child, checking temperature and respiration. The children seemed to have warmed since being brought indoors, but they remained far too cold. None had woken, or responded to his ministrations. Caleb entered through the side door with an armful of firewood and stoked the stoves. Moving with the doctor, the village reeve, Colt, watched him work, occasionally commenting. "First healthy children I've seen in at least ten years, and they're every one in a coma," he said. Doc Barber grunted and proceeded to the next frail form. "Still," said Colt, scratching his beard. "Half-dead's half-alive, which makes this lot better off than any child we've seen in quite some time." Barber scowled. "Don't be crude, Peter," he said over his shoulder. The number of people in the church house swelled, as those who had discovered the children were joined by other villagers, each leaving his or her own work to find something to do nearby. Colt saw through their pretense, but could hardly blame them. No village woman had been pregnant in perhaps six years — at least, none had progressed far enough along to show. Even in the days when a few women still fell pregnant, fewer still carried to term. No village child had reached its first birthday in nine years. Caleb, aged something more than 16, was the youngest living person in the shire, until today. 
Barber finished his rounds. Seven girls and six boys lay huddled in the aisles nearest the stoves, each attended by one or more villagers. Besides their frightening chill and eerie sleep, the children seemed otherwise healthy, almost unnervingly so. Although they were slim, Barber judged them well-nourished — surprising considering the villagers' own winter stores were running bare. Caleb finished with the stoves and made his way to Barber and Colt, brushing his hands on the sides of his trousers. "Where'd they all come from?" 
Colt spoke, "Every story is the same as yours. Found a little boy or little girl where none should be: on the beach, under the snow, in an old barn." Colt didn't need to add: There was nowhere for these young ones to have come from. The nearest settlement was 10 km south along the peninsula, then another 30 clicks inland. And anyway, the single track between them was impassable this early in the spring. Which left the next question, of what to do with the newcomers, already answered. 
The villagers spoke amongst themselves, making arrangements to shelter the children in their homes. Some went to fetch clothes or extra blankets to carry them home. Quietly, the old vet and the reeve discussed the wisdom of this, but the old church made a poor hospital — if there was, indeed, anything wrong with the children. Besides, Colt doubted he could convince anyone to surrender a living, breathing child to the cold sanctuary of God's house. Ruth Bowman was the first to make ready to leave. She cradled a bundle of blankets crowned with short brown hair. As she left, two more people entered, carrying yet another child. Barber directed them to the vacancy left by Bowman, and checked the boy's vital signs. By nightfall, only Barber and Caleb remained in the church. Caleb's mother had spirited away the girl he'd found on the beach, but he remained behind to try and help the doctor. As the stove fires turned to embers, Barber threw on his coat and packed his medicine bag. Caleb left him to close up. 
The windows of the village flickered with lantern light as dusk deepened into night. A cold breeze blew in from the Lake, and Caleb turned up his collar as he marched home to the top of the road. He only now remembered his crabbing crates, abandoned on the beach this morning. Caleb imagined that many other villagers had left their chores undone when they'd heard the news, or discovered their own pale enigmas. When he arrived home, there were no familiar smells of cooking, and the kitchen stove remained unlit. The lamp in his room glowed, and he found his mother sitting vigil over the child who now lay in his bed, quilts pulled snugly to her ivory chin. "I tried to get her to take some water," his mother said without looking up. 
"Maybe some soup," said Caleb, hoping it sounded like a suggestion. 
"It's in the kettle on the stove, you can have it cold tonight." Caleb nodded and turned back down the hall. After a brief meal of yesterday's cold soup, Caleb slept uneasily on the sofa. He rose before sunrise, still wearing his coat and trousers. With only a thin crocheted throw to cover with, he'd slept poorly, perpetually too cold. He crept to his room, finding his mother sitting beside the girl, dozing in the gloom. The child was invisible beneath a mound of blankets, but he could hear her gentle breathing between his mother's occasional snores. He breakfasted on stale sourdough and the last of the soup, then pulled on his boots as the stars faded. He looked in once again on his mother, but left her sleeping. 
The village paths were grey in the pre-dawn, and only the occasional lantern cast splashes of gold from scattered windows. Returning to the beach, Caleb recovered his crates, no worse for a night lakeside, and shouldered his yoke. His crab nest was a charnel house; without him to feed them, the largest had turned on their siblings and eaten them, leaving dismembered carapaces floating in the rock pool. Caleb scrambled over the stone walls of the nest and the three largest, each with shells as wide as his own forearm was long, raised their claws and hissed at him. He dispatched them with his baton and stacked them into two crates before the survivors devoured them. Then he gathered the four largest of the remainder into his other two crates, and collected the shredded remains of the cannibal feast into a pile, before sweeping the whole mess into the Lake. He netted clutches of small fish which came to pick over the carcasses, and dumped them into the nest. They would sate the smaller crabs for another day or two. 
The morning was gone by the time he started back. By now, there was usually at least one tin boat out fishing, but Caleb saw no one, and the tinnies all lay belly-up at the tree line. Bochier ran the mixed business shop where Caleb would bring his catch to hold or trade. By midday, the shopkeeper was normally busy tending to villagers looking to trade for salt, snares or other essentials, but today, he met Caleb as he laboured up the muddy trail. 
"Quiet today," Caleb said. "I guess people have other things on their minds." 
"Everyone's gone searching," Bochier said by way of greeting. Caleb blinked. Those who hadn't stayed in to tend the foundlings had quickly abandoned their own work before trekking into the fields and pines to search for more sleeping miracles. The few left in the village traded in unease and rumour. 
"Have any of them woke up?" Caleb asked. None had. Nor had any taken food or water, or even stirred in their sleep. From what Bochier had gathered, the children just slept, breathing, but otherwise inert. No one knew what it all meant, but the appearance of these children had to mean something, Bochier insisted. 
Caleb dropped his crabs into the icebox behind the shop and stowed his yoke. He thanked the shopkeep for his help. Then he continued uphill, and home. At the front door, Caleb turned the knob and listened. The house was silent. He stepped in cautiously, and as he rounded the corner, he saw his mother sitting on the sofa, with her back to him. He shut the door, and she looked up from her book. "I used to read this to you when you were a boy," she said. He walked in and saw a pale face resting peacefully in her lap. "You were such a blessing," she said, meeting his eyes for the first time in two days. "I opened that jar of apples I've been keeping back. Have some of that with your lunch." On the table beside her, a small bowl of apple preserve sat uneaten. She returned to her book, reading quietly aloud. 
The children slept. Barber shuttled between houses, feeling more useless and less welcome with each visit. There was nothing for him to do, and the faces which met him at the door gradually changed from welcoming to suspicious. He felt his years, and decided to surrender as Venus rose above the eastern tree line. He slogged home past the slumped shoulders of others returning from a day of fruitless searching. By nightfall, no more children had been uncovered. Barber sensed the change in mood of the village. After years of shared hardship and occasional success, a sudden divide had riven the families. The bitterness on the faces of the returning searchers was visible in the dusk. Tired and troubled, he ate a toasted crust, and fell into sleep without dreaming. 
Colt lay in bed, listening to his wife snore. He thought of her in summer, two score years ago. Flora had packed a lunch, and they'd laid a blanket on the grass of a fallow field. Her skin glowed in the sunshine, and they made love. The following spring, Nicky was born. Bringing him into the world had nearly killed Flora, but he was strong, and beautiful, and they loved him. He sprouted up like a weed. Flora started sitting for some of the other kids while their parents worked. The village was growing into a town. Nicky died on the Lake, in a storm. Colt didn't believe in omens, but he couldn't help but wonder. The power failed that winter, and the lines couldn't be raised again until spring. Two families froze to death. Two years later, the electricity stopped altogether, and villagers in outlying houses moved closer in or away altogether. Nicky's friends grew up, but their own children were sickly, or worse. Flora shuttered her babysitting trade. Colt was elected shire reeve, because he was well-respected, and because no one else wanted the job. There had never been another vote, but tonight, Colt was ready to retire. These silent, defenceless children frightened him. He rolled over and hugged Flora, who muttered something he couldn't make out. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. 
Caleb awoke in the night, and padded from his makeshift bed on the sofa to his bedroom. The lantern was snuffed, but he could hear the girl's gentle breathing. He crept to his mother's room, where a light still shone under the door. He quietly turned the knob, and found the room empty, his mother's bed undisturbed. The candle on her bedside stand had burned low, almost to a pool of wax. He stood with his hand on the knob, unsure of what to do, when the candle wick sputtered and flickered out. 
A squall blew in overnight, lashing the village with sheets of rain. The houses squatted sullenly beneath the clouds, and the only movement was a loose shutter, banging in the wind. When the sun finally broke through the following morning, the muddy village tracks lay undisturbed. On the beach, the windward wall of the crab nest had been washed out under heavy surf, and the freshies scuttled to freedom, their shells glistening in the morning light. On the far side of the village, the greenhouse glittered in the spring light. A pane of glass had blown out in the storm, and young buds shrivelled in the cold. The gardener's calendar parted at the spine, and pictures of flowers long-gone scattered across the floor. 

TRACK 01 "Blue Calx," Aphex Twin INDEX: 00:00:00 
TRACK 02 "Lost Child," Susumu Yokota INDEX: 07:12:52 
TRACK 03 "Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa," Sigur Rós INDEX: 10:36:14 
TRACK 04 "Spirit of Peace (Parts 1-3)," Popol Vuh INDEX: 20:49:70 
TRACK 05 "The Horse and the Hand Grenade," Decoder Ring INDEX: 41:28:58 
TRACK 06 "Chimeras," Tim Hecker INDEX: 46:24:46 
TRACK 07 "Meeting in the Aisle," Radiohead INDEX: 49:34:35 
TRACK 08 "Kaskaskia River," Sufjan Stevens INDEX: 52:36:45 
TRACK 09 "Sons & Daughters," The Decemberists INDEX: 54:47:08