Crackborne

Archive I

Tonya was born on a construction site in Zelgrad. Her mother was an optimistic and diligent construction worker, while her father was a silent, miserable firefighter. On the day Tonya was born, her father rode his bicycle to the construction site. Finding that Tonya's mother had already been wheeled out of the temporary delivery room, he said, 'Good,' then got back on his bicycle and left. In Zelgrad, children of construction workers did not go to school. Taking care of her younger siblings naturally became Tonya's responsibility. Tonya liked to stare into her siblings' eyes. She always felt there was something very special hidden in them, but she could not figure out what it was. Her mother died not long after giving birth to her fifth child, Nina. When she leapt from the tenth floor of the workers' dormitory, Tonya was sitting by the corridor railing, stacking a pile of empty detergent cans into the shape of a building. After her mother's death, her father became even more silent, and all the housework fell to Tonya. She had no complaints. To her, if she did not cook, she would starve, and if she did not wash clothes, she would have nothing clean to wear, so there was nothing to it. One night, her father suddenly dragged her out of bed. Under her terrified gaze, he said in a trembling voice, 'I'm taking you to see a fire.' By then, her father had long since been removed from the fire brigade and reduced to a drunkard, but that night he was still as nimble as he had been in his youth. He all but dragged Tonya as he sprinted up a hill of construction waste, then climbed onto an unfinished section of the city wall. Finally, he pointed at the flickering firelight within that towering stone wall and said to Tonya, 'There's a fire in there. They're on fire! They're all done for!' Then he laughed and laughed, until he fell to the ground and curled up into a ball. The leaping firelight rose over the stone wall, and its shifting colors fascinated Tonya. The next moment, she heard the whistling of crossbow bolts from within the wall and the cold orders from the loudspeakers, and so she woke up. Tonya ran all the way back home. Her younger siblings were still sleeping soundly. In her panic, she climbed into bed and sang herself a lullaby. A few days after her father was thrown back home by the Patrol Unit, he died, probably of liver disease. Tonya tried to ask around about what had caused the firelight behind the stone wall that night, but no one could give her an answer. The stone wall was as silent as her father. On the day the formula tin ran empty, she took her mother's bloodstained work clothes to the construction site. A junior foreman pulled her aside and said many things. The gist was that every city in Ursus was built this way. Construction workers took root in the wilderness. They were the first residents of a new city, building their own city with their own hands, yet forever unworthy of having a home. The purpose of the stone wall was to block all prying eyes. It had been built that way not only for practical use, but to frighten anyone who stepped out of line. Only after Tonya promised she would never again ask about anything inside the stone wall did the foreman stuff a formula voucher into her hand. In the end, that formula voucher could only be exchanged for a packet of coarse salt. Formula was scarce everywhere. She walked home with that packet of salt, passing by the stone wall, and wondered what she was supposed to do with a packet of salt. She thought of her siblings' hungry cries, of the construction workers' withered muscles and glistening sweat at the worksite, of her father's crazed laughter, of the firelight that night, and of the gleam she saw when she first looked into her siblings' eyes— A shaft of sunlight brushed over the top of the stone wall and fell less than a meter in front of her. She only had to take one small step to walk into that light. In that moment, she understood why she had thought of children's eyes, the color of firelight, dripping sweat, formula, or salt... That was life, and that was what it meant to live, no matter what kind of life it was. So she raised her head and stepped forward to meet it. She still loved that numb, agonizing life.