Broadcast 14 - She Was Brave, and It Was Not Yet Dark
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/8, 6:00 PM. Re: fairy tales, smoke, and stars.
Radio broadcast, broadcast on 102.8 ROKC, 2/8, 6:00 PM. Re: fairy tales, smoke, and stars.The broadcast you are about to hear, while based o
The broadcast you are about to hear, while based on reality, is a work of fiction. As such, the following content warnings apply: blood and wildfires.
Transcript can be found here, or below the cut:
INT. ROOM – EVENING.
[The radio turns on. Static.]
NICK: Good evening, Kullerluk! You’re listening to the Radio of Kullerluk City, informally but more truthfully known as the ROKC. We’re your hosts Nick Denikin–
MALLORY: –and Mallory Wilson. Route 80 is once again out of commission due to wildfires. More on that later.
NICK: The previously planned nature walk through Mollymawk Woods has been Postponed due to… Inclement Weather. More on that too.
MALLORY: Anything else on the list?
NICK: Just you reading these lovely horoscopes.
MALLORY: (very not pleased) Right. Well… here goes nothing.
(firmly, imperative) Listen. There was once a town that sat in a valley. The town was happy, the sky was bright, the fields fertile. But there was, as there always is, a wood. The wood was dark and the trees were tall but only the children were scared, and only because their parents told them of all the monstrous creatures.
In the town there lived a girl, who was much too old to believe in monsters and who was much too old to be sent to bed for snapping at her mother. And since she was much too old for such things, she resolved to ignore them. Her sister would not notice her absence from the room they shared and if she did she would never tell. The woods looked beautiful in the dying summer light and even if there were monsters in them, she was brave and they could not hurt her.
But there was a reason that the parents told their children stories of monsters.
She slipped out through the back and into the cool embrace of the trees. At first, she wandered, a weight lifted from deep in her chest, the ground soft beneath her feet. Gradually and all at once she came to a cave. The cave was dark and the moonlight did not reach inside, but she was daring, so she tip-toed up and peered in. Out of the cave there came a voice, dragging like snakeskin against the dirt.
(in a voice) “This is not a warning. This is not an admonishment, this is a question. In good faith. What are you reaching for?”
She jumped back, shaken, but she was no child. So she thought. She knew what monsters were like, they had gaping maws with sharp teeth and sharper claws; wiry, matted fur, and they were so big they could carry a child off without even slowing. She peered back into the cave. She did not see any monster in the cave, there were no teeth or claws or fur. There was just a voice. And voices were what people had.
“Solitude is not exactly an embrace, more of a suffocation,” she said.
“Anything that surrounds you so completely must be an embrace.”
So she thought. The light was dimming and the shadows around her were stretching. She did not want to spend the night sitting up in bed. The moment stretched, yawning into a chasm before her, coming back down to a crack in the ground. A line. She stepped across, gradually and all at once.
The cave walls slowly dripped cold water onto the back of her neck, feeding the moss that grew on the walls. The stone was hard and smooth beneath her feet and she could feel the weight of the earth pressing down and down on her chest. But she was brave, and it was not yet dark.
“You won’t be stopped,” said the voice. It did not simply echo around her, it spilled out from deeper in the cave. She took a tiny, careful step forward. And another. And another. And another, until all of a sudden she slipped. She slid down slick stone, slamming sharply into the floor at the foot of the slope. She found herself in a new space, not a passage but a room. She looked around and she could not stop looking. The walls, ceiling, much of the floor was coated in crystals, sparkling in the growing moonlight.
“The sort of light you only see alone,” she murmured to herself. It was magical, like every star in the sky was right there with her. She spun around, running her hands along the crystals. This would be her place, she decided, no one else would get to come here. This would be her palace and she would be the queen, her hidden fortress, her magical hideaway – it was so clearly magical. And, once she had worked out the magic, when the world was ready, she would show everyone. She would–
(an interruption) “You are a creature of layers, layers of skin and muscle and organs and bone,” whispered the voice. She saw, then, that she cut her arm when she fell, that she had smeared her blood on the crystals. She saw, then, that there was a shape, crumpled in the corner of the cave. She saw, then, that the hanging crystals looked quite a lot like teeth and claws, the moss just like matted fur. She turned, and finally she saw a warm glow reaching down the passage, but it was far too early for the dawn.
She ran. She scrambled up the slope and she dashed away from the light, deeper into the woods as the smoke caught in her throat.
And the voice called after her: “The sun will set and the sky will burn and the ground will harden and nothing will be gentle or sweet.”
[Static, and music.]
NICK: (continuing an unfinished thought, amused) You have often stood in the doorway of a building and listened for a voice that spoke too low for words to be discerned out of the general undercurrent of sound that fills every empty space of your world. (pointed) You are restless, restless enough to wake in the dead of night and choose to spend those late, lonesome hours straining to hear that voice or else searching the sky for the familiar shapes that adorn it. Tonight will prove no different, though dark clouds will shield those shapes from you, and the light that reaches your eyes will be that of something far more worldly.
The electricity will hum beneath your skin.
No one will notice when the lightning strike ignites a spark deep in the woods, and no one will notice once it begins to spread – aided by dry leaves that will be passed over by rain that will never develop into anything more than a light shower. But when the sun rises, its morning colors stained with ashy grays and blacks, the town will be alerted to the danger, and sirens will start up at the fire department down the road.
What will follow is this: a day of hazy skies and a night illuminated by a wildfire that has, by then, been brought mostly under control. Stars will flicker through the smoke, and you will find yourself caught between staring towards them and staring towards the dancing light that you can just about make out from the vantage point of your window. You will not sleep, stuck thinking about the fire that will not destroy your home, however much you dream that it did – (pause) that it would.
[Static.]
NICK: So, how was it?
MALLORY: Besides the fact that they were (with disgust) horoscopes, not much different from the disaster report.
NICK: Did you… hear yourself? Because I would not describe that as horoscopes.
MALLORY: (beat) I did in fact hear myself. And it was… fascinating to say the least.
NICK: I mean, it was definitely something, that was. Far. From what I wrote.
MALLORY: Yeah, sorry about that. They were… fine, from what I read, but apparently the words that came to mind were not those.
NICK: It seemed… well, it was just a story. So. Do you think that… counted?
MALLORY: As reading the horoscopes? I certainly hope so. I’m not looking forward to having to read them out again if it doesn’t.
NICK: I just don’t want our experimentation to wreak havoc.
MALLORY: Neither do I. (pause) I hope– yeah.
NICK: Why would that happen? Why abandon the format?
MALLORY: I don’t know.
NICK: (continuing his previous thought) Whatever is happening is clearly tied to the horoscopes, so I don’t get why the structure would just get tossed out. It doesn’t make any sense. I assume it wasn’t a story you know or anything?
MALLORY: I’ve never heard it. And I can’t think of anywhere I could have taken it from.
NICK: It was a long shot, why would it be our words now.
MALLORY: (hesitating) Do you think it’s true? Or just more words taken from nowhere?
NICK: Well, the disaster reports are true. But from what you’ve said the horoscopes… aren’t really within the bounds of truth or fiction. It's… something else. We can’t know what the precedent is.
MALLORY: (lightly frustrated) How are we supposed to figure out anything if we don’t even know what we’re working with?
NICK: Who knows. Maybe we aren’t.
MALLORY: Best we can do now is wait until next week and see what changes. If anything at all.
NICK: We’ll learn something regardless.
MALLORY: And move forward from there. For now, thank you for joining us this evening on the ROKC.
NICK: We’ll talk to you all again next week, and remember: she was brave, and it was not yet dark.
[The radio cuts.]
