Rust by Christopher Ruz

Author:Christopher Ruz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Christopher Ruz
Published: 2018-10-30T22:05:30+00:00

"That's it. Gentle, now. Don't want to mess up the weave."

Mrs Rosenfeld had once, on late night TV, heard the universe described as a rubber sheet stretched tight. That everything inside that universe - planets, suns, Rosenfelds - were weights distorting that sheet, drawn toward one another by the lumps and folds in the fabric. That sometimes the sheet tore. That things fell through the gaps... unless, the dour-faced presenter had explained... someone quickly stitched the tear together, or joined two tears with a fresh sleeve of fabric, allowing all those planets and suns to pop out somewhere else, somewhen else.

None of it made much sense to Rosenfeld at the time. She'd still been the pretender's catspaw then, a servant with a clear set of instructions and little wiggle-room for interpreting the foundations of the universe. But now, as the ritual took hold and Gull's home began to waver, she wondered whether that show had been right all along.

The ritual was simple. Most rituals were. Blood as a catalyst, intention as the driver. Together, she and the Raconte twins were taking a small section of Rustwood and excising it. Slicing away infected flesh and suturing the wound shut.

It was for the best. The more stains Gull left on Rustwood, the harder the town would be to clean once the war between the queens was over.

Problem was, it took a lot of force to erase a whole house from existence. Cutting out a chunk of the world tended to leave scars. She'd seen them before: Canif Street was one of the worst. A place where stolen power had been used indiscriminately, without control. It'd burned living men into the red brick walls on either side of the street, twisted that rubber sheet into a nasty knot.

It was easier to remove something small - a sofa, a mug of coffee, an abandoned shoe. The sort of weight that didn't distort the fabric too much. But a home was a home, and Gull's house was bigger than any bungalow had right to be. She could feel it from the street, the outward press of air that signalled how space inside those clapboard walls was larger than it looked from the outside.

The first step, then, was to reduce that space. Squeeze out all the inconsistencies. Reduce Gull's fortress to a tight, compacted ball of matter and send it on its way.

It wasn't a ritual she enjoyed. The queens used it sometimes when parts of town had run their purpose. Crushed them down, chewed them up. Did whatever the queens did with the wadded-up rubber sheet that was their private universe.

The blood circle shimmered. The Raconte twins were statues in the rain.

Gull's house shuddered.

It was slight at first - a tremble along the weathervane, like the bungalow was waking from a long and restful sleep. Then a creak of wood against wood, brick foundations flexing, shifting in the earth.

Strangers passed, hidden beneath wide black umbrellas. They didn't look at Mrs Rosenfeld, or what was happening with Gull's home.

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