“What is that?”
The sentinel turned and analyzed the somber, iconic scene depicted in the painting.
“It’s the ark of the covenant, being carried to the Promised Land.”
“Why?”
“They believed the covenant was God’s instructions for mankind, and they had to protect it. It was their exodus. An old legend.”
“It’s in this castle with us?”
“No. The ark was lost. But it’s just a story.”
She listened and eagerly wanted to hear more, but the sentinel did not understand how important it was for her to hear a story. With eyes wide, she sat transfixed on the painting, looking back at the machine. As she did, she kneaded a soreness in her right leg. DDC39 looked down at her and spoke:
“You were limping. Are you injured?”
“I’m okay. I just have a weird thing with my leg. I was born with a bone in my left leg just a bit longer than the right. And so I wear a special shoe for it. Do you have any problems with your legs?”
“I have axels. They’re okay.”
“Can you tell me the rest of the ark story?”
“Another time, perhaps. I need to shut down for the night. Can you watch over the fire? Make sure to be safe?”
“I’m always safe.”
“And you won’t wander off?”
“No.”
“That’s good. Stay here with me and shout if you are afraid.”
She stretched her legs out before the flickering coals and looked up at the reredos, spanning up the sacristy, gilded in gold leaf. The bas-relief shimmered in the glow of the dying flame. Becca watched the shadow play on the church wall and wondered:
“Do you have dreams?”
“No. It’s time to rest now.”
“Okay. Good night 39.”
“Good night Becca.”
The sentinel rolled to the southern side of the building, just beneath the painting, and positioned its frame forward. It looked up at the high north window near the ceiling, adjusting itself incrementally in each direction until it got the position it wanted. The girl sat by the fire, looking into the flames, before getting up and curling beneath the sentinel’s tri-axel, wrapping herself in the blanket she held, gripping the cup tightly. The flames lapping at the pile of kindling subsided to red embers and the church darkened, consuming them in the abyss of the past. The lost memories of the Jesuits and Tohono O’Oodham, relegated to handprints and claw marks in the alabaster. The kingdom of heaven faded into the ornate walls as the light inside vanished and the moonlight crept in, bathing the pews in a snowy hue. The sentinel initiated its shutdown procedure.
• Solar power cell — 1%. Solar armor — 81%.
• Drivetrain — operational
• Visual/cortico/thermal/radar optics — operational
• HD/Comms — disrupted
• Water — 68%. Napalm — 100%
• Railgun — 22% capacity
• JE — religious questions arise; no logical conclusion
• Shutting down core operation and initiating battery recharge
10. The Wolf is Mine
Dawn arrived with the dead moon in its jaws. It entered the church through the high windows and kept vigil, old star in the lonesome valley. A column of light fell down upon the sentinel, resting on its solar plate and warming the girl who slumbered beneath its frame. The dark wilderness of the empty church whispered the creaks and moans of oblivion — the fossil blood of creation, from the hands of one carpenter to the next. Starmaker out there, somewhere. From the old infinity of the shadow’s heartbeat came a howl of the desperate. A thrashing animal lost in the void. There was a pair of eyes sinking into the sleeping mind of the girl. An ocular tension riling the sensory levers of the machine, too. The clicking and clacking of a rattling shell. A broken heart, sent back and returned, bloodied but stubborn. One drop of the truth.
The girl woke. Her eyes opened into the half-light of the church, glancing around the apse. Old saints in repose, pointing at nothing, casting blessings upon the silence. She wriggled free of her blanket and tiptoed through the aisle, peeking into the corners, peering into the shadow of the transepts. In the dark of the sacristy, some portal beckoned the girl. A panel held up an icon of Santiago on pilgrimage — it appeared to be ajar. She walked past the chancel, under the watchful eyes of the old intercessors, and pulled open the hidden door. She walked through a long hall leading her to the mission school, passing by the inner courtyard, and stepping into the warmth of the eastern wall.
She exited the church through a side door and found herself in the cool air of the Sonoran aurora. She rubbed her eyes and stared back in wonder at the heat rising in the east. A thicket of saguaros on a distant ridge obscured the sun and spun a dim veil on the desert floor. The girl lifted her hand to brow, shading the light falling into her view, and looked out to the crossed arms of the cacti on the knoll. There, in the distance, the sad eyes of her dream burned back at her beneath the crucifex of the waste. And then it was gone. Again. She peered out in the rising sun, looking for it once more. She kept looking for it. Was it something real?
The desert floor was filled with wells of mud — liquid topsoil drenched from a midnight downpour, circling the roots of creation. She leapt from one dry patch of aridisol to the next, steadying herself on her awkward right leg, and ducked into a dense mound of graythorn. She looked around, brushing the blonde hair back from her face, and ducked down into the shrubs to pee. The wind listed through the eastern ridge — petals of bahia rolling past her feet.
A crack of branches broke into the calm nearby. Once more. The girl froze in the weeds and looked straight, looked left, and then behind her. The spindly graythorn rustled in the wind, pinning into her side. She winced in pain but made not a sound. The air settled and the branches of the brush fell still. A solitary Gambel’s Quail darted out from the thicket just behind the girl. A trio of baby quail raced out after the adult, following it into a line of desert willow to the east, little top knots bobbing in unison. The girl sighed, pulling her waistband back up. She laughed aloud, to no one, and knelt forward to crawl out of the graythorn.
She walked back across the sodden wild, crisscrossing the web of dust and mud, stepping high over peppergrass and trodding past a soiled, trampled patch of chicory. As she got near to the door, she paused — rattled by some question, something out of place. She turned back to the flattened chicory and saw its white petals stamped into the soil. She looked at her path out to the graythorn and back to where she stood now — steps away from the door. All about the chicory, on either side of her path, a trail of muddy footprints vectored out in every direction — passing from dust into mud and back into dust. Silt splattered lines intertwining with the pools of wet clay in the hard-packed land.
She took another step back. The sun was cresting now in the east. A warmth fell upon her feet and the sod basins around her. The still pool beside her rippled. The clods of mud broke on the surface and a jaw craned open above the layer of thick pitch. A gasp of air sucked into the gaping maw and it settled back under the surface — a pair of nostrils protruding just above the surface, spits of air firing out. She looked around at the other mud holes — they too trembled and moved in the dawn. A hand shot out of one nearby — grabbing a quail that wandered too close. A revin splashed up from the pit, covered in a thick layer of mud, hair matted in clumps of dripping clay. Its mouth broke open and, in a wild gust of feathers, sunk the flapping bird into its teeth, ripping breast from bone. The revin sat there in the pool, gnawing at the torn bird, feathers clinging to the side of its muddied face. It stopped, eyes opening and looking up slowly at the girl, statuesque in the daylight shining upon her like a flood lamp against the pale eastern wall of the mission. A hand shot out from the pool beside her and clamped down hard on her ankle. She cried out. A piercing shriek. From each pool, revins emerged, splashing forth from their mud slumber, shivering in the cool morning. The revin with the bird, its muddied skin now drying and cracking in the sun, pointed at her and gurgled out a garbled shout.