Through Loam and Chalk We Swim
by Rosalyn Robilliard
There is a myth amongst your kind that if you cut me in half I will not die. I will not suffer. I will form into two pieces and carry on living. Your myth is a lie. It is not how we reproduce. We are not born from blood and brutality.
Yesterday, Timber and I made babies for the first time. It was soft and warm and quiet. They grow now in cocoons in the dark of the Roots Forest.
It feels strange, tiny versions of myself. New life fresh from the earth. Will they get the best bits of me? Will they be skilled at earth-swimming like Timber? Will they travel far, visit the lands of loam and chalk, or will they stay close? Care for us as we wilt and age.
Today, Timber and I will go to the Potato Mines. Make sure there is enough food for our babies.
When I was just a red thread, dewy and damp, the mines were vast, the earth briny with waxy skin and swollen, sweet rot. Now, the earth is stripped and chewed, bare from the many babies that have come before.
We swim through the earth, Timber far ahead as usual, my fleshy body pulling through the silt and stones behind them.
A beetle drops from above. Deeper than expected, hungry. But I am not alone. Two others curl side by side and we flick and tussle in the dark until it burrows away, leaving one leg behind. A souvenir of our victory.
“Name?” I ask, sliding beside them through the narrow tunnel left in Timber’s wake.
“Clay,” says one.
“Me Moss,” I say. “And they?”
“Leaf,” says the other.
“Have mate?” asks Clay.
“Have mate,” I say proudly. “They fastest swimmer. Best swimmer. Name Timber.”
We push on, the dank earth slick with the mucous of our bodies.
I find Timber eating when we reach the Potato Mines.
“Beetle,” I say. “Close one.”
Timber wraps their body around mine and pulls me towards the potato. It is small, pocked and pitted. It is delicious.
“Eat,” they whisper. “Eat and be ok.”
“Enough for babies?” I ask, sensing the worms and potatoes around us.
“Not sure,” says Timber. “But eat now. Worry later.”
Time passes and we slurp and crunch through the potato together. We are almost done, almost ready to head home to the Roots Forest, back to our babies and our quiet life nuzzling and knotted in the darkness, when you appear, slicing through our world with a blade of rust and metal and death.
Timber curls and contracts and I wrap my body around theirs, trying to hold on. It is night, which is unusual for you. Normally, you would come in the day. In the burning heat and dryness. But now, you split our world open to dampness and rain and dark.
You are determined. Digging and pouring, unconcerned for the potatoes or the preservation of our lives. I sense the blood and screams of those cut in two.
“Fear,” says Timber. “Fear, fear, fear.”
“Be ok,” I whisper, thinking of Leaf and Clay, of our babies safe in the Roots Forest. “Be ok.”
Our potato is scooped up on the spade and we coil in terror as it bounces across leaves and earth outside. The dark world stretches around us, vertigo conjuring visions of crushing bird beaks and fanged hedgehogs.
I can feel you digging in the vibrations: slicing and shovelling, throwing down the spade, huffing and puffing, dragging and squashing, wiping your face with a sleeve. Then piling earth back in, scraping it with your nails as it turns to mud in the rain. And crying, crying, crying.
You find our potato and I grip Timber tightly as you send us tumbling back into the ground. Then you’re pouring above us, the soil falling, the pressure as you push down with your boot. The beat of your footsteps retreating. Then quiet.
“Timber?”
Their body is stiff against mine, slick blood running across my skin.
“Be ok?” I ask, trying to pull Timber deeper into the potato. But there is earth where there should be rot. The potato cleaved open. Timber half taken with it.
I lie there for a little while, listening to the moans around us fading to silence, holding what’s left of Timber, feeling the warmth of their body begin to fade. Our babies are safe in the Roots Forest, snuggled and growing in the dark. But Timber will never see them.
Eventually, I uncurl my body and push out from the potato.
Timber lies still, draped across the open flesh. I nudge them deeper into the quiet cave of the potato skin.
“Be ok,” I whisper. “Be ok. Be ok.”
The beetle has returned. I can sense it scrabbling between the bodies above. And there is something else, far below in the deep. Something big.
A movement to my side startles me, but then I recognise Leaf. Their body has been chopped, one end a bloody nub. But it is only a small segment, not so bad that they cannot survive.
“Clay gone,” Leaf whispers, their body softening with grief.
We press our heads together. A mark of respect.
“What below?” I ask, still sensing the new thing in the darkness. “Something big?”
“Investigate,” says Leaf. “Come.”
We swim side by side, slow and quiet, down, down, down. There is warmth there, below. A dying warmth, like Timber’s.
Other worms are already there when we arrive.
“What is thing?” asks Leaf. We can tell it is curled up on itself. And it is bigger than anything we have come across in the deep before.
“Food,” an old worm says quietly.
“Food?” I ask, unbelieving. “From where?”
“From above,” the old worm says. “This thing dead.”
“Come,” says Leaf, and I follow them through the earth and closer to the thing.
It is fleshy like we are, like you are. Its heat is fading fast, and I can taste blood in the earth around it.
“Eat?” asks Leaf.
I am full from the potato but I push forwards anyway.
The thing is wrapped in thick cloth like you wear. It is difficult to chew.
“Up,” says the old worm close behind us. “Up better for feed.”
We follow them up over the thing towards the head. There is hair like yours, messy and scratchy against our bodies. The taste of blood thick and metallic.
“Hole,” the old worm says. “Hole there. Follow.”
We swim across the face, over the wrinkled cheeks and soft eyes where other worms are starting to eat as though sucking rot from potatoes. At the top of the head, a ragged hole gapes open, worms coming and going as if through a tunnel.
“Come,” says Leaf, and I follow them into the hole.
It is spongey inside but not quite ripe. Not yet rotting. There is a large pellet, cold like the spade, hard and shiny, pointed at one end, wedged deep in the tunnel.
“What make hole?” I ask. But the old worm doesn’t know, just swims and eats around the pellet.
“This thing last for long time?” I ask.
“Long time,” the old worm says. “Others come. Some already here. Fly larvae, beetles. But still. Long, long time. No worm hungry now.”
I feel the pull towards my babies. The desire to wrap and curl around their cocoons.
“Return soon?” asks Leaf as I swim back up the tunnel. They are without a mate now, as am I. Perhaps we might stay together. Perhaps we might have babies of our own. But I need time after Timber. I must nurture our children first. Finish what we started together.
“Return soon,” I say. “When babies born.”
Leaf nods and swims away, settling their injured body to sleep and wait beneath the thick tongue of the thing.
And so, I swim home, back through the silt and stones, past scuttling beetles and slow, gooey slugs. It is harder now. Without Timber cutting through the earth ahead of me.
In the depths of the Roots Forest, I slip between the safety of the soft wood and pebbles, curling around the cocoons where our babies grow and sleep. Then I wait.
When our babies hatch, I will return to the thing in the deep. We will feast as a family and remember Timber. Our children will grow strong. They will swim fast and travel far and wide through the earth.
And I will forgive you for the blood and brutality you wrought.
Because you gave life to our babies.
Rosalyn Robilliard is the pen name for two sisters living at opposite ends of England who stay in touch through writing. They love to explore new realms across fantasy, science fiction and beyond. Recently, they won first place in the 2nd Quarter of the 2023 Writers of the Future contest, and first place in the 2023 Mollie Savage Memorial SF&F contest.
