As Paige’s encampment continues to grow, she sets out to rescue a stranded batch of pilgrims in the polluted lands - and has an unexpected encounter at the end of a long and lonely road.[2]
| ATTENTION: SPOILERS AHEAD! Beyond this point, major plot spoilers are expected. Continue at your own risk. |
Description[]
Paige and Hayward Attempt To Talk[]
Paige tunes and re-tunes the radio. She’s trying to contact Hayward. They are inaudible to each other. They can’t make out what the other is saying. So they just speak to each other, hoping it transmits.
Paige begins. She tells Hayward of the state in Bellwethers. The weather has been awful. She thinks winter will be harder than anticipated. She doesn’t just have bad news to share. She’s been sober, and the camp’s growing. The unrest has been inspiring people to join them. The farmlands around the Grace have emptied, leaving them alone and isolated. They have come across eighty trucks of military supplies. There are now 500 of them. They have a second infirmary and the start of a schoolhouse. Their problems remain but it seems they are weathering the storm. They have even had their first child born on the Grace. She reflects on whether poisoned land such as this can truly create life. She says that the government must know their location. She supposes the war is keeping them too occupied to move against them.
Hayward tells the ether that they’ve made contact with Shrue. He says he just needs to leave Glottage and make it back to the Grace now. He’s sure that Paige knows about the end of the war and the Battle of Mal-Retour.
Paige has not heard about the end of the war. Elgin wants them to negotiate with the CLS for their independence when the Peninsula surrenders. She wonders whether its more useful to the CLS to keep them around. She’s hopeful.
Paige has been changing, she found a thorn growing from beneath her skin in her wrist. Her veins have become dark like roots, moving beneath her skin. Something in her eyes is beyond tiredness and hurt. It unsettles her. She tells her disciples to call her Paige other than Widow. She learns their names and stories and shows them that they are all equal. Still people pray when they see her. More and more, they keep their distance from her. Elgin pities her, Dan marvels at her. She’s not a lonely, isolated wreck anymore. But she also isn’t one of her disciples. She feels as though the story they gave birth to is consuming her. She’s starting not to mind it, as long as she can remain herself for a time. She’s grateful to her disciples. She wants them to outlast her. She tells Hayward that she hopes they both return soon.
Hayward asks if she’s figured out the riddle yet. He pauses, before saying he’ll tell her the answer when he sees her again.
Paige has found the unrevised version of On The Birthing Of Gods. She wanted to know if they can kill the Many Below, if they need to. The book tells her that there is no idea too grand to surpass death. Time is the destruction of any idea. Everything will die, that is the only thing they have in common with the thing that eats them. She ends by telling Hayward to have courage and return to them while they still have time.
Hayward is comforted by having heard her voice, even though he does not know what she has said.
A Party In The Grace[]
That evening, we hear music playing and the sound of dancing and cheering. Dan leads the disciples in their celebrations. Paige speaks to Elgin, telling her that they’ll never write about this. That this is theirs and theirs alone. Elgin says she’s happy Paige is smiling.
Paige's House[]
Paige reads from On The Birthing Of Gods. It wonders about their future. It sees the polluted lands. It wonders about what used to be there before and what happened to leave them behind. It wonders about what they will leave behind. Paige slowly drifts off to sleep.
In her sleep, Paige repeatedly mutters one word: “tree”. This seems to have become a common event for her. We can hear the awe inspiring noises of the Woundtree.
And then a voice breaks through the dream. It is Moss, frantically calling for help. He is trying to reach the Grace. Their vehicle has gotten stuck and they have a sick woman, so they can’t make it to them on foot. Paige tries to contact Elgin or Dan, but neither respond.
Paige Rescues Moss[]
Paige leaves in her truck with a gas mask to help Moss and his companions. She hits her horn and hears an answering horn further out in the storm. She drives towards the sound. When she sees their vehicle, she jumps out of the truck and runs towards them. She can hear them coughing and wheezing inside the vehicle. Moss wants to help Paige, but Paige tells them that she can handle it. She tells them they have doctors in the camp and gives them directions. Paige attaches the vehicle to the tow bar and turns it on. Moss turns on the engine of the vehicle. At first it struggles and then it rolls free. She tells them to keep driving, and they do. Paige watches them go and then returns to her truck.
The Car Crash[]
When she reaches her truck, Paige hears the sound of a woman’s voice. It is the God Upon The Wind. It shocks Paige, who keeps trying the ignition until the truck sparks to life. The God Upon The Wind tries to convince Paige in order to feed on her. The voice fades, as though she has left it behind. Paige breathes heavily. She sounds relieved.
And then the god uses Dennis Duplass’s voice to call out to her, causing her to swerve. She hits something, turns, and crashes. The car flips and lands in a ravine. Paige kicks the truck door open. She breathes hard and uses a flare gun to signal her location. She looks for a way to climb out, but finds nothing. We hear rising whispers and a song. Paige yells after it and begins to move towards the voices.
The Temple Of A Dead God[]
Paige staggers into a cave. We can hear the Maiden singing. She digs monotonously. Paige stares at her, breathing through her gas mask. The Maiden tells her that she doesn’t need it anymore. Paige asks if it’s safe from the wind here. The Maiden doesn’t answer, continuing to dig. After a moment of hesitation, Paige takes off her gas mask. She says that the Maiden is the woman that Dan has been seeing in the hills. Paige introduces herself. She asks what the Maiden is doing, and the Maiden tells her she is waiting for the storm to die. She invites Paige to wait with her. Paige tells the Maiden that she’s welcome with them at the Grace, but she tries to understand her choice of isolation. She even offers the Maiden some of their supplies.
The Maiden stops singing. She says that this cave used to be a temple, when these lands were living. There used to be markings on the walls, it meant everything to those who lived in the town before there was the concept of Bellwethers. Now the rock is devoid of markings. Life cannot inhabit a vacuum. Paige already knows this. The Maiden tells her that she knows this because Paige read a study about it once. She was always reading back in Nesh. There’s another study. It’s about brain function at the point of death. It has occurred to Paige that visions of gods from prophets on the point of death are merely a final effort to find meaning out of meaningless life before it ends because we cannot endure nothing. Paige realises that she’s not a person. The Maiden does not answer her, instead telling Paige that she is a person. But there is still something in her eyes that is both more and less than that. She is told that she is answering her, but Paige cannot make sense of her answers just like she cannot make sense of the face she wears. She asks if when Paige dies she will be able to understand the song beneath her song. Paige frantically tells her to stay away. She tells the Maiden that she belongs to another god. The Maiden tells her that everything belongs to the Cairn Maiden. The Maiden tells her that it’s strange that she fears and detests the predator to which she belongs but will call upon it when cornered. The Maiden tells her 27 of her disciples have been laid to rest since she arrived here, and that far more have fallen afield. So the Cairn Maiden will make her an offering, out of kindness. Paige will ask questions before the storm dies, and the Maiden will answer. Paige comments that no blessing comes without a cost, and the Maiden agrees. Paige asks if this is really kindness. The Maiden tells her that the Cairn Maiden won’t tell her not to fear her, but does encourage her not to waste her time planning an escape. Paige says there’s no benefit if she can’t trust her answers, and no benefit if she just dies anyway. The Maiden responds that there’s none but comfort.
The Maiden tells her that the Cairn Maiden feeds upon dying gods out here. She listens to the screams of starving and forgotten beasts on the wind. She sings to them and leads them to the site of their final resting place and there she buries them. Gods starve, in time. The Maiden says you can’t blame a beast for not knowing when it’s time to go, you can’t blame a great hunger. She sings with love and devotion. She sings the words their used to, she draws their marks. For a moment they know they are loved, and they are happy, and they forget that they’re starving. Then they are buried with comfort.
Paige asks if they will survive, The Maiden tells her it’s a wasted question. Paige asks if they will win. The Maiden tells her she will not. They will leave behind a ruin. Paige asks what they will achieve. The answer she receives is that there is a god out there that reigns over all the other gods. It feeds indiscriminately, and does not love them. It is seen in their rivers and roads, in their own hearts. It is fed even when it is not intended. They have made it necessary, unintentionally. Paige is asked again if she can hear the song beneath her song. Paige can. She tells Paige that she will not outlast the beast, that the world may not have a future beyond it. But it will die, eventually. The worst may not have come yet. If they are fortunate, something new may grow once it is dead. Her life’s work is one page in the book of its ending. It is only an animal, because it hungers. One day it must die. At the end, the Cairn Maiden will offer it the comfort it does not deserve. She, like the beast, is just and unjust equally.
Paige asks if they have a spy among them. The Maiden tells her that they have had several. The government knows their location. They will come for them soon. She asks if this is where it ends, not for her but for her disciples. The Maiden tells her that it does not end her, and it does not end now. Paige believes she is lying. She asks where they go from here. The Maiden tells her that nowhere is left for her. She is told that she must learn to listen to the voices in the wind, and find meaning in the rain.
After a moment, Paige asks what’s left behind after gods starve. She wants to know what’s left at the centre of the polluted lands. The Maiden asks her what follows death. Paige answers ‘life’. The Maiden adds that nothing is also left behind. Paige asks why she speaks like she wants to help them. The Maiden says that she does so so that the Cairn Maiden may continue to feed. The Maiden says that perhaps her voice is not a voice at all. The only mystery may be that she cannot look at something strange in the world without imagining voices in the wind. The storm is dying.
Paige asks if she will see Hayward and Carpenter again. She is told there will be no comfort in it. She asks if she will be free of what she has made - she won’t be in life or death. She asks if she will suffer - she is told that she will suffer less than some and more than others. She asks if the Maiden will let her go and she doesn’t receive a reply. We hear the windscreen wipers again, and hear Elgin and Dan rescuing her.
Paige and Elgin Speak[]
When Paige wakes, Elgin is watching over her. She asks how she is. Elgin says she’s lucky they found her. Dan thinks it’s a miracle. Paige wants to know what Elgin thinks. Elgin has been thinking about how other holy books end. How prophets spend too much time with their god, and leave their people behind. She asks Paige not to leave them behind. Paige says she won’t leave without a final goodbye. They found a body in the cave. He seemed to have died there decades ago.
Paige asks if Elgin trusts her. She knows what to do next.
Trivia[]
- The Legislatures have known the location of the Grace for a while.