Bobcat in the Watertime
short fiction from unpsychology voices
New from Unpsychology Voices – the first of our Fictions & Fabulations: to submit a story to this publication contact us at submissions@unpsychology.co.uk
Bobcat in the Watertime was the first of a series of short fictions written for Unpsychology Magazine and appearing online at our Medium publication. The stories are set in a future — in a place a bit like the UK — beset by devastating seasonal floods. The Heat has ravaged the land; and the RageTime has left an uncertain, fearful society — a world in which outliers, artists and Lostlings creep around the edges of the present, and live with the legacies of the far distant past. This first instalment appeared in the Climate Minds anthology (Unpsychology Magazine issue #4). These are newly edited versions for this new Unpsychology Substack.
In the watertime, Bobcat is stealthy; weaving wraith-like between old buildings. It would not do to be seen. Watertime is danger-time in these parts.
Hiding in the broken corners of a waterlogged house, Bobcat hears the growl of the patrols further up the valley. At this time of year, only the Royals are about. There is too much water; too much danger of flooding a precious and illegal Auto engine; too much at stake for most people to be stopped with a little bit of something in the back. But the Royals don’t worry about flooding an engine and, with too much time on their hands, wouldn’t miss an opportunity to pick up someone out wandering.
Bobcat could sit here for hours at a time — days if her mind is set on it. She could hide anywhere in this place, and Watertime is Bobcat’s time — a time to sift through the ancient memories carried in soggy artefacts and the occasional photograph that she unearthed; of a family, long dead or moved away, or an unfamiliar landscape captured on paper long ago. Bobcat is intrigued by the texture of paper, and wondered how it had ever worked — it seems such an inefficient, ephemeral form of communication. She touches the pocket where her precious Pad is hidden and shivers at the thought that someone might ever see her with it.
When Bobcat had been small and feral she would often disappear into the estate, and brother Jake would be sent in search, but now Bobcat is grown there is no-one to search; no-one even to know she is gone. Jake has moved up to the City now, with his Hawkmate Linden, and is living in a crowded Collex off the London Road. Mamma dead. Dadda long gone. And Flute, the little one, taken for a Wildthing, and learning to sing somewhere in a Bighouse up the valley.
Bobcat would like to sing, but knows that the Royals, and the Hawks, might be out. They know the keening of a Lostling well, and would close in quickly. Best to wait here, in the dark and damp of the receding flood and think of home. Maybe later Bobcat will find a time and a place to let her voice rise. Maybe later.
Mamma would always sing to Bobcat and Flute; and Jake had always danced. He was the storyteller; the storydancer. From small, he kept the fires burning on cold, late nights. Someone hadn’t liked his stories, and the Hawks moved in, but Bobcat — then as now — was quiet and stealthy and crept unseen beneath their keen watching.
Dadda was a gentle man, until the Tecks said no, and then he would sit at home, growling lightly to himself, as the nightlight fell. The spark had been taken out of him, when the bright-suited Tecks had said no. Then Dadda went away — or was taken away — which was much the same thing. For what is there to do, when a person’s factory-life dies?
There is another world, down here in the forbidden flooded zone, where textured, wet brick scrapes on Bobcat’s skin, and creatures slither in and out. Bobcat marvels at the sheer roughness of brick. It is like nature’s stone, but human-made and so extraordinary. Everything from the old world seems so rough, she thinks, yet so alive. Sometimes Bobcat hates the factory smoothness of the world; misses the chug of imagined industry. At these times, she wants to hear something more than waterlap, Letrix hum and birdsong. Even the Royals’ patrols are welcome; their powerful, hunting engines alive and growling, in contrast to the swish of the giant Letrix that carry necessities and VIPs, snaking from the City to the Lands and back again.
There are the old Autos too, of course, with engines that chug and stumble, and that these days are only good for farm-runs and illicit forays across the fields and lanes, carrying the delicious, forbidden carcasses that everyone eats at Waterfest — in the waiting days each year before the waters rise and the curfew comes down.
What was it that Mamma used to sing? An old song about a river?:
“I was born by the river in a little tent
Oh, and just like the river I’ve been running ev’r since
It’s been a long time, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will”
Years back, the Heat came — and then the Ragetime. Now this river is a raging, tidal sea, bringing salt to the sweetwater lands for three long months; leaving barren, brown silt in its wake each Spring.
This is where Bobcat now sits. The waters have receded, revealing the upper reaches of an old estate — built from old brick and filth, its old lanes ribboned in black — more silted over and broken each year. At low-water, Bobcat can explore the whole estate: from the big house at the top of the hill, with its top storey that still poked, incongruous, from the waters even at the peak of the Watertime, to the small houses at the bottom — long drowned.
Humans lived here once. Bobcat has seen their ghosts and sung with them. They sang Mamma’s river song, but many others too. Strange laments for lost times. Songs of coal and gargantuan fires in the heart of the earth. Of ships and cranes, noise and rivets and oil. And men. Men who hewed coal and heaved fuel needlessly around the world. Men who thrived in the rough world; brought their hardness to their fists and then even to weapons that boomed, barked and tore. Men who went on journeys — exploring faraway lands. Bobcat knew this from the stories, but found the idea of it strange and unearthly.
What could ever be wrong with the bit of Earth we live on? Bobcat aches at the thought of Jake, somewhere out there in the City, far from home. She had seen images of the City on a screen at Homeschool once, back on one of the few days she had agreed to attend. Mamma had said it would be good to get some learning, but Bobcat only went sporadically — just enough to keep Mamma off her back. That day, an over-enthusiastic volunteer Learnman had showed the kids a film of the City. It seemed strange and busy; a smooth, self-important sort of place. People everywhere, but all of them aimless, Bobcat thought. It didn’t give her much of a taste for learning — or for cities, with their manicured CityFarms and their wide streets populated by the giant Letrix centipedes that carried people from here to there.
Looking back, Bobcat wonders whether this was when she first knew she was a Lostling: strangely at home with these damp, crumbling bricks and their lost history; and with the Habitants — the creatures who always shared this land with humans, even as tides and storms washed away the old places. Bobcat looks down into the estate, and up into the sky where gulls travel back to their roosts on the coastal cliffs, and further up to where kites and buzzards circle — high above the flood-washed land — and wonders what it had been like before.
A sudden noise. A falling stone or brick, and Bobcat’s heart beats fast; she feels hunted. The Hawks might be out; it is their time of day. In some ways, being picked up by the Royals might be preferable to the Hawks. The Royals patrolled to keep the land clean. They rough you up a bit, but then they’d tip you out of their truck somewhere in the wilds and, because you know these lands so well, you’d back in Town before too long.
The Hawks are a whole different breed of bird. They select their prey with care, then home in and always take it. With the Hawks, who knows where you might end up? What you’d end up being?
Bobcat’s heartbeat subsides. It was likely a feral cat, fox or some other Habitant. She decides to move, though, and finds herself climbing the tower of the big house. Bobcat is careful; it’s the only dry place on the estate, and someone — Human or Habitant — might be lurking. The rotting steps that remain strain and creak, and Bobcat has to do some shimmying where the stairs have gone. She is careful, but there is no sound from above. Bobcat sees a familiar ghost, and whispers a song to it, and the ghost goes up ahead on the stair, into the room at the top, a kind of turret, made of brick, not stone like those ancient castles. From here, Bobcat can see for miles in all directions. It is breathtaking as the sun starts to set over the water, and she stands there for a while.
And then Bobcat sits down on the floor and beneath her hand the timber crumbles a little. Searching around in the space between the broken floorboards, she finds a box. It is a simple artefact, made of wood, but carries patterns so unlike anything she has seen in this world, that it seems like a piece of magic. She realises that it has been carved; inexpertly to be sure, but this is still a crafted thing. It was not produced from a box by a TeckApp, smooth and certain, safe and sustainable. This is wood, carved from a tree, with patterns imagined by some Human who might have lived here, in this brick tower, high above a land that once was proud and unapologetic — a land manufactured from a belief that anything can be utilised, consumed and replaced.
And yet this box does not have quite the same feel as its deluded times.The ghosts are different — Bobcat can sense them faintly buzzing around the lid as it is opened. This, she realises, is an artefact of uncertainty — one born from care and patience. It is, to see it plainly, an item of plain and precious beauty.
There is unimaginable pain and grief here; she can see the hot ghosts of these emotions clearly. They hit her like a storm, and she closes the lid, before gentler wraiths whisper comfort and her courage rises again. She opens the box again. There is an smell of old wood and must, and a small cloud of dust motes rises in the early evening sunlight.
Inside is paper. That stuff again! Bobcat is momentarily disappointed, but she fishes out the wad. There are small objects in the box too: a bracelet made of beads and threaded on wire that instinctively Bobcat puts on her wrist where it fits snugly; a small smooth heavy object made from something Bobcat guesses must be a metal of some sort (she vaguely remembers touching a metal pan and a hammer head one day in Homeschool — not entirely useless, this learning, then, Mamma), but she cannot discern its function. There is also a small frame made of a substance a bit like it was made in a TeckApp box. In it is a faded picture of a smiling man with a checked shirt and a cap.
There are other things too, but Bobcat’s attention is drawn to the piece of paper at the top of the pile, which seems thicker than the ones below. She notices that the pile is joined at one side, and that the paper is hinged to open. “Book” — the word comes to Bobcat like a flame. She flicks through it. The paper is musty and delicate. On the front is a picture and some words. The words on the front are regular, like on a Pad display, but the words inside, whilst readable, are irregular, strange, idiosyncratic. Some of the writing is faded or smudged, and Bobcat loses patience. She puts the book aside. Reading is tiresome at the best of times. She has gleaned enough learning to decifer regular Pad-text, but this seems too messy and difficult.
Now a ghost gets inside her and she surrenders to the familiar static that always crackles before the visions and voices come. This is what it is like to be a Lostling — and Bobcat embraces the sensation. What once was so frightening and othering, is now who she is. She settles in.
There is a woman in a room. It is drab and empty and two men stand beside her. She is hunched in the only chair, which sits by a window. Outside can be seen an even drabber place where there are rows of things that appear to be strange small Letrix or Autos. Bobcat reels, she has never seen so many of these machines in one place. The effect is overwhelming and the vision almost fades. Bobcat breathes and holds on.
The woman rocks gently. One of the men is talking, but Bobcat cannot hear his voice. All she can hear is the voice of the woman in the chair. She is repeating one word over and over : “Flood, Flood, Flood, Flood!” Her mouth does not move; her voice like a silent scream. The men seem kind; their body language is caring, but Bobcat knows that the woman cannot hear them. And she knows that the woman is also a Lostling.
The connection flies like lightning.The woman’s eyes flicker and she raises her head momentarily. She is terrified and her eye catches Bobcat’s eye — or so it seems — and her voice says, “Everything was lost”. Then she is back to rocking in her chair. One of the men, catching the subtle change, seems to move towards her. Then he pauses, breathes out, says something final to the woman and to the other man standing there, and turns to leave. Bobcat is now in deep; she asks the woman a question. The woman’s head stays down but her answer still reaches Bobcat: “The floods came”.
And then she is gone. Bobcat is used to this sudden disappearance, and brings herself back into the turret room. The early evening has given way to dusk and there is a chill. Bobcat isn’t averse to spending the night on the estate, but today she wants to go back to Town. She decides to leave the box safely under the floorboards and tries to make the space look as undisturbed as possible.
As she begins to track back through the hidden paths and gullies, she thinks of the woman and the way her eyes had died when the men spoke to her. She settles into the rhythm of her walking and notices, as she always does, the rustling and shifting of Habitants on their unfettered familiar way around the land. She is always something like happy at these times — alone and surrounded by the beings she can understand and connect with. Alone with her visions too. Alone with her questions.
And then suddenly she understands that the box and the book are connected to the woman and her story. She needs to touch these objects again to know what she must know. Bobcat stops and turns, and reluctantly winds back down the paths to the Estate again.The familiar ghosts welcome her, as they always do, and she climbs through the cooling evening air, to the turret room again.
No time like now. She fetches the box again and feels the shiver as she touches the lid. Something shifts in her — another familiar sensation, but this time she knows it is more perilous. She opens the pages of the book and begins to read the smudged, untidy lines. She hears the words spoken distinctly by a woman’s voice:
“I knew when I took the box in my hands, that a mistake had been made, though I could not turn back now that the Earth’s future depended on me. So, I stood for an age, holding this crafted, hardwood artefact. it seemed an innocent-enough, small piece of beauty.
It did not occur to me that I could open it. I became so used to holding it, that it held me; its iron wood, magnetic. Then I caught my fingernail on the clasp, and my attention turned to what I held. I set it down upon the table. Wood upon wood, it clacked and settled there.
It sat expectantly, as if inside was some carved homunculus, or an acorn holding the worlds daemonic potential; as if it would come to life and, its lid-mouth flapping, speak its arboreal truths with hinge-creak and a wood-voice croak.
I waited. It sat heavy and squat. I clicked open the clasp and lifted the lid. There was a faint squeak and I peered inside. At first there was only darkness: a sable light, radiance inverted. Then there were a billion stars: a universe encapsulated in carved boxwood. Tiny lights whispered; dark light absorbed the silence so only my watching remained.
‘I am not here’, I said, ‘I am in a new room far from life and familiar breath; I have recently arrived here. I have taken a long draught of these bright waters; I drink them to enter heaven. I will return; will take a claim and stake it’.
I spoke as if the names of this new world could promise our forested reunion. The box was still and silent. I closed the lid. Inside it, a prayer echoed. A faint, olive fragrance of hardwood lingered.
Then the floods came. The fires came. My home died. I died. I rose again. I wrote this story.”
Bobcat is a Lostling and understands that meaning is not a necessity, but she knows with raindrop clarity that she is holding a thing of madness — an object crafted in the eye of a storm, a story written by hand in the days before the world became smooth. She is glad she didn’t live in those days, when words such as these were seen as crazy by well-meaning men, and when such deep loss was regarded as an acceptable price to pay for Human freedom.
Bobcat understands freedom — it is the way she weaves between storms, keeps out of the keen eye of the Hawks, makes sure that a sniff of her isn’t caught by the Royal hunters in their growling machines. Freedom is in the vision itself, and the way the Habitants live and die with each other. Freedom is in the way Jake couples with his Hawkmate in the City and Flute sings for a rapt audience on winter nights. Freedom is in the precious scarcity of made-things — and can even be found in the Letrix, Collex, Factories and CityFarms. Freedom is in a quiet world, and in the storms and tides that are worshipped in the Watertime.
And freedom is in Mamma’s deep song of the river. A river that long ago swelled to swallow up the Estate and the sanity of a Lostling who lived on its banks a long age ago. A river that hides — even now, in the silt and detritis of its comings and goings — secrets and artefacts, books and boxes, bones and memories — and ghosts.
Bobcat sees all of this, and she is glad, above all, that the ghosts are here to whisper to her tonight.And she lies down on the floor of the turret, high above the Earth and Water and sleeps in the Watertime with Mamma’s voice washing through her:
“It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die
’Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.”