CZM Book Club: Everything that Isn't Winter, by Margaret Killjoy, Part Two

Margaret reads you part two (of two) of her own story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Colson Media book Club, book Club, book Club, book Club,
book Club, book Club. I wonder how long I can
do that for book Club book Club. No, I should
probably stop do the rest of the introduction. Hello, and
welcome to Cools in the Media. Book Club, the only
book club where you don't have to do the reading

(00:23):
because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
And this week and today, this very day, the reading
that I'm doing is also writing that I did. This
is the second half of a story that I wrote
in twenty fifteen called Everything That Isn't Winter And if
you didn't listen to part one well with so much love?

(00:44):
What the fuck are you doing here? How does your
brain work? How do you tune into the second half
of a short story and think this is where I'm
going to come in on? I just don't understand you.
More power to you. This is that weird week between
Christmas in New Year's that feels like the last lap
in Mario, like not the third and final lap, but

(01:06):
the one that you drive afterward on autopilot while your
race stats play in the foreground, Or at least that's
sort of how it always feels here. It's a bizarre time.
But we're continuing the cozy energy of early winter with
a quote and I'm quoting Hazel here a surprisingly cozy
for how much gunfire is in it end quote story.

(01:28):
So hopefully this hits your post holiday malaise with a
fresh burst of energy, the kind of energy that will
make you shoot people. And to wait, I don't want
to spoil anything. Where we left off, we had our
main character, Aiden, who runs point on tactical for a
tea growing commune called The in Between during a belltaine celebration,
and yes, we know that that's Mayda, but stick with

(01:48):
us for the holiday theming, some of the collective's tea
fields are torched by raiders, and we follow Aiden and Bartley,
a fellow tracker and a tactical point, as they hunt
down and kill a speck. Aiden returns to a strained
relationship with their boyfriend, and we got some devastating dialogue
about the cracks that exist between the two of them.

(02:10):
Now we pick back up with Everything That Isn't Winter
by Margaret Kildren. There's a certain kind of peace on
a farm, and the tea leaves were emeralds in the moonlight,
the night birds sang in the forest. The trees stood
like crows on the horizon. There's a certain kind of

(02:32):
peace and holding a rifle as well. It shares the
same simplicity, the same honesty with that rifle. In those fields,
my intentions were bare. We worked the earth, We defended
the fruits of our labor. I walked our eastern perimeter
through rows of tea and through the burned scar where

(02:52):
so much of our tea had been ahead at the gatehouse,
electric lights spit out a flood of across the tracks
and into the hills. We used red to save our
night vision. We used lights at all because they made
a good distraction, made any potential attacker believe that our
attention was focused on the railroad. I'd learned every bit

(03:14):
I knew about tactics a hard way. There were more
bodies buried in our fields than there were people living
in the lodge. But that night, while I clutched a
radio in one hand and waited to hear from Bartley,
they didn't come for us from the trees. They didn't
come for us from the tracks, or over the Green River,

(03:35):
or from the mountains or the roads. They came for
us with artillery It took three seconds for two shots
to destroy the lodge. I saw them, those meteors as
they arked through the sky on a low trajectory and
reduced my home to rubble. They were tracer shells marked

(03:58):
to help their gun or aim, and they burned phosphorus
through the sky. They'd come from the east. They'd come
from Stampede Pass. I'd leveled trees older than my grandparents
to help build the lodge. I'd pedaled rebar eighty kilometers
up the tracks from the ruins of Tacoma to reinforce

(04:19):
the stone and mortar construction. And I'd killed two people,
a woman and a man who tried to rob me
on the way. I like to think I knew the
difference between the evil and the desperate, and those two
had just been desperate. I'd left their bones in the forest.
Three seconds, two shots, and all our work was gone.

(04:44):
With adrenaline in me, I don't consciously process sound or
scent or touch. Everything is visual, Everything is slow motion.
I ran through the green fields towards the shattered lodge
as people streamed out. People were shouting. I might have
been shouting. I saw Khalil walk across the road carrying

(05:05):
someone toward the bomb shelter. That man existed to help people,
to carry people to nurse. Green shoots up out of
the soil and into the light. I existed for other purposes.
I gave up on returning to the lodge. They could
rebuild without me, and Khalil was alive, and what good

(05:26):
would I do? And I was their guard, and I'd failed,
and I couldn't face Khalil, and I ran for the gate.
I set a rail cart onto the tracks, settled into
the saddle, put my feet on the pedals, then gave
a last look the lodge. Khalil was watching me, hands
on his hips, his chest heaved, He turned his head,

(05:48):
and he walked away. His gait told me more than
any words ever had. It was the gait of a
man who'd given up. I peddled east with my rifle
held out cross my lap. I pedaled until the adrenaline
cleared and the evening's fog grows thicker and thicker, and
I had the chance to realize what a mess I'd
just thrown myself into. A loone which was better than

(06:11):
acknowledging the mess from which I just fled. It didn't
make sense to destroy the lodge. It didn't make sense
to destroy the fields. It made sense to capture our holdings.
Whomever I was running off to try to shoot, I
didn't understand them. If you know your enemy, and you

(06:31):
know yourself, you need not fear one hundred battles. If
you know yourself and not your enemy, you will lose
as often as you win. If you know neither yourself
nor your enemy, you will never know victory. I'd pedaled
those tracks hundreds of times. The Cascade Range was my home.
I had grown up in its shadow. But fear creeps

(06:52):
into your system and renders the familiar into something alien.
The fog was milk thick, as thick as it had
ever been. My eyes tracked movement. I knew better than
to register the shifting of moonlight through wind blown branches,
the glint of light on the steel of the rails.
I passed a rusted junction box, still painted with pre

(07:13):
collapse graffiti, which meant the tunnel was only a few
hundred meters out. I stopped peddling, set the brakes of
the cart wouldn't roll back downhill, then dismounted as quietly
as I could. It's hard to disguise. The sounds of
heels on gravel. I heard my own, but there was
another footfall fainter right behind me. A hand clamped down

(07:36):
on my shoulder. I whirled, went for the knife on
my belt. Bartley she had one finger to her lips,
her eyes betraying sleepless exhaustion. We scrambled up the embankment,
pausing where we could just see the tracks at the
edge of our vision. My hands were on the bark
of a poplar. Its scent was in my head, and

(07:57):
I was grounded there in the tunnel. She said, she
was murmuring low into my ear. They've got military ordinance,
two big guns on two railcars, plus a whole train
of weaponry stretching into the tunnel. Who are they, don't know?
I've seen about twenty of them. Most of them are

(08:17):
camped inside the tunnel alongside the ordinance. Looks like they've
been there a few days. Uniforms, I asked, Nope, motive,
no idea. Bartley said they fired a couple artillery shells.
What they hit, They took out the lodge. I'd never
known Bartley to wear her heart on her sleeve, but

(08:39):
she took a breath at that, then another casualties. She asked,
I didn't stop to count. We should kill them all.
She wasn't judging their character, she was addressing a strategic concern.
How I mind the tunnel a couple years back? What
I asked that loud, switching for a moment into whisper

(09:02):
instead of murmur. I didn't tell anyone because I thought
people might get mad, and I figured our general Assembly
wouldn't go for it. How close do you have to
get to set it off? I asked? Close? Bartley said,
real close? Ten feet inside the front of the tunnel
against the south side wall. There's a rotted hunk of
plywood behind it, a cheap old breaker box. I put in,

(09:25):
switch the first three in the last three breakers and
then we've got two minutes to get clear. Well, that's
set off the ordinance on the train. Probably not. How
do we get there? I've got an idea. I'm not
gonna like it, am I, I asked, nope? But do
you know what you will like? You will like the

(09:47):
six savings on these products and services? What a deal?
What a deal? And reback? I'm here to negotiate our surrender.

(10:14):
The words were foreign in my throat and hung strangely
in the air. They weren't my words. They weren't words
I really knew how to say. But I said them
loud and attracted the ire of a number of armed
women and men, Women and men I hoped wouldn't object
too immediately and too violently to the rifle I still
slung across my back. The fog was thinner at the

(10:35):
base of the tunnel, and it calmed me down to
see the silhouette spires of the trees and the faint
glow of stars above me. Two flatbed railcars extended out
from the tunnel, each with an old world gun, larger
than some houses. Inside the tunnel, a string of box
cars stretched farther than I could see. A half dozen

(10:58):
people approached me, no older than the kid I'd shot
on the cliff side. I like to think I knew
the difference between the evil and the desperate, And these
people weren't desperate, not on the face of things. Each
had a rifle trained on me, Each watched me with
some mixture of indifference and malice. Evil isn't something we

(11:18):
do to one another. It's the way in which we
do it. It's why we do it. There were two
clear authorities, a man about ten years my senior with
gray flecked into his red hair, and a woman with
at least twenty years on him. The two conversed briefly,
and the man approached General Samuel john He said he

(11:39):
didn't offer his hand, Aden Jackson. I said, I didn't
offer my hand. Our terms are simple, the general said.
Anyone who leaves between now and noon tomorrow will not
be hunted down and shot. Who are you, I asked,
General of what army? The new Republic of Washington? He said,

(12:00):
another warlord. What's your claim on our land? I asked.
I knew his answer before he said it. I grew
more confident that I knew him, that I could outwit
or outshoot him. Small holdings like yours and the rest
of the New World are a relic of an era
we aim to put behind us. He said on script,

(12:20):
Washington has suffered too long without central authority. Mind, people,
is fun. It's kind of dangerous, how fun it is.
You're right, I said. We will drive this train to
the end of the line, laying waste to everything in
our path, and raise forth our savior from the coastal waters.
That was a pretty different script. We'll raise new cities,

(12:41):
the general said, his eyes rolled back. He held his
palms face up in front of him, pure cities built
of light and manna. And we will live in his
grace until the zombies. The older woman added, until the
zombies come and devour those of us who remain in
the cities. I looked around from bandit to band and
grins were painted on every face. You're screwing with me.

(13:05):
Of course, we're screwing with you, the general said. We're
not on some moral or religious quest. We've got artillery
and we want the pass so we can tax caravans,
and if you try to stop us, we'll kill you.
That's the world, now, that's always been the world. It's
a good world for people like me and mine, and
that's the only metric i'd judge by. We are going
to just tax you, you know, the woman said. A

(13:27):
little bit of fire, a little show of force, and
then we tax you. But I heard you shoot my grandson.
All eyes and guns were on me, which I wanted.
With a certain, very limited understanding of the word want,
I'd lwered them away from the mouth of the tunnel
behind the trumped up highwaymen. In the thin fog, Bartley
Lizard crawled toward the breaker box. I didn't feel like

(13:51):
lying anymore. You'll get yours, I said. There have always
been people who want power over others. There have always
been people who don't. The whole of our history is
the history of people like you killing people like me,
of people like me killing people like you. You'll live
a miserable shit life, distrustful and afraid, and you'll get yours.

(14:15):
I'll get mine in the end, the same as you.
But I'll have lived a life in a society of equals,
among people I love. I'll have loved them. Hey. One
of the bandits, a young man, turned in time to
see Bartley crawling into the tunnel. He raised his rifle
and fired at my friend. I turned and ran uphill,
perpendicular to the mouth of the tunnel. Always run uphill.

(14:38):
People don't like chasing uphill. I made it behind a
fixed stump twenty meters up the embankment, and bullets lodged
into the decades dead tree flesh. I unslung and unsafetied
my rifle, returning fire. Bartley made it to cover herself
on the far side of the train from the bandits.
They could keep me pinned down and outflank me. Put

(14:59):
a bullet than me, then turned their attention to Bartley.
I had two spare magazines, one friend, and no hope
for backup. I had no hope at all. I shouldn't
have been cruel to Khalil. That man had left his family,
left the safety and stability of Bainbridge Island to follow
me into the mountains and to the edge of the

(15:20):
new world. He'd followed his dreams. We'd met in the
winter every winter since the first one. We'd walked out
along the Green River to its source. We made a
week of it, sixty kilometers round trip, and we'd held
hands and stared at the breath of the sky, and
camped in the snow and walked out along the ice.

(15:43):
We'd never get the chance again. He worried about me.
He was right to worry about me. I was about
to die. Bartley caught my attention, then started banging on
the steel of the car with the butt of a rifle.
This drew all eyes, and they were out from cover,
moving to flank me. I squatted up, aimed, and picked

(16:05):
off the general with a round through his cheek, his
head spun, his neck snapped, and his legs gave out.
The bandits turned away from Bartley, and she stood and
shot the older woman, the second in command perhaps or
maybe just the general's mother. Either way, she collapsed to
the hole in her sternum. A bullet grazed me, then

(16:25):
it burned across my shoulder. Blood welled up. Stay and
guard the train, one of the remaining women shouted into
the tunnel. The four remaining gunners were turned to cover.
Crouching by the wheels of the train, Bartley ran past
the train and forore the trees. She drew fire, but
not from every rifle. I took two quick, deep breaths,

(16:48):
let the oxygen fill me up, then rolled from cover.
I learned long ago not to let myself listen for
individual shots once I was committed. Fear is the antithesis
of action. I heard a scream, a woman's scream, and
I ran down the embankment into the dark of the tunnel.
There was the plywood behind it, the breaker box. It

(17:10):
was too dark to see, but I found the breakers
by touch and tried not to focus on the muzzle
flashes coming from outside and inside the tunnel. Alike. Bullets
are dangerous. I know that intimately, But most bullets aren't aimed,
not really, and unaimed bullets are like lightning in a field.
If you stay low, you'll survive more likely than not.

(17:32):
I hit the six breakers. Two of the gunners from
outside had crossed the tracks, and I saw their boots
as they worked their way down the other side of
the train. I'd be flanked. I rolled under the train
and took shots at the boots. Hit one was rewarded
with a man falling prone, and I shot him in
the temple. I crawled my forearms on the ties and gravel.

(17:55):
The wound in my shoulder was beginning to protest. I
shot another woman in the foot, and the two remaining
bandits outside fell without me firing. Bartley was alive. I
was almost to the mouth of the tunnel when the
charges blew, and only the behemoth of steel above me
saved me from the cascade of rock that followed. It

(18:17):
was no good to think about the lives that were
about to end. Suffocating in the darkness behind me, it
was no good to question whether or not I was evil.
In the dust and fog, I crawled forward toward the
faint moonlight. And do you know what else crawls towards
you through the firefight. It's the sonorous sounds of these

(18:39):
products and services at your whimsy, in your telephone on demand.
Here's the ads. Her back, Bartley had a hole in

(19:06):
her leg where muscle and fat and skin should have been,
and I got her onto the rail cart with a
tourniquet on her thigh. People say you can't use a
tourniquet for more than a few minutes, but I'd learned
the bloody way that you could get away with one
for longer if you needed. Hey, do me a favor,
she said, as I started to pedal. What's that? Don't
let me die? She said, that's all I asked, that's all,

(19:29):
don't let me die. You're not dying. Okay, I've got
another favor. What's that, Don't let me die? I really
don't want to die. I pedaled harder. It was downhill,
easy going, and we went in and out of fog banks,
and Bartley went in and out of being in a
mood to talk when in and out of looking like

(19:50):
she was going to make it. All I could think
about was Khalil, about how sure I'd been. I was
going to die about how sure i'd been. I'd never
see him again. It was a long half hour before
he reached the ruins of the in between. Three people
met us at the gate, including the woman who'd come
for the harvest, the one who danced with Khalil. She

(20:11):
helped me carry Bartlett to the makeshift infirmary set up
on the road. Any awkwardness between us lost to more
pressing matters. Doc told Bartley that she'd live. I gave
a quick report, and that report spread quickly. Khalil wasn't around,
and a fear came over me, a fear worse than firefights.

(20:32):
He was okay. I'd seen him escape the lodge. I
knew he was okay, but he wasn't okay with me.
I first met him when we'd both been visiting Tacoma
during the death days, when neither of us thought we'd
live to see twenty I'd loved him half my life,
the half that mattered. I went down the concrete steps
into the bomb shelter. It was full of people, and

(20:54):
they were hurt and scared, and they wanted to talk
to me. But they all had the distinct disadvantage of
not being Khalil. I went to the lodge, what remained
of the hall we'd built. There were people who weren't Khalil,
picking through the smoking rubble, shoring up the surviving walls,
digging for survivors and corpses. I went to the remnants
of the bridge that at once in the old world

(21:16):
crossed the Green River. But there was no one there
to kiss me in the shadows of the ruins. No
one waiting in the river with his hand on the
small of my back, no one singing in sweet low tones.
I thought about walking into the river anyway, until the
water took me. The river in spring is as cold
as snow. I went to the fields, and I found

(21:40):
him in the northeast corner, the corner we'd seen from
our poster bed. His hands swept across the leaves. He
sang wordless serenades to the tea. Khalil. He heard me
because his body tensed, and he paused his song. But
he didn't turn around. Khalil, I'm sorry for what. He

(22:03):
was far enough away that I could scarcely hear his voice.
For a lot of things. You do what you do.
A breeze came across the fields, from the river, whispering
against the tears of my cheeks. And I fought harder
to keep my voice level than I'd fought to stay
alive an hour prior. I don't want to just do

(22:25):
what I do, I said. He turned towards me, and
he was crying harder than I was. He always cried
harder than I did. It's okay if you worry about me.
I said. You ran away tonight, he said. He didn't
try to disguise the pain in his voice. You went alone.

(22:46):
Maybe it's too much for me that you're not here
when I need you, That you're never safe, that you
take stupid risks. I had the distance between us and
he was just out of arm's reach. I was going
to die tonight, I said. I sat down, hugged my knees.
I was going to die, and I was never going
to see you again. And now I've survived. But what

(23:08):
if I never get to be with you again. He
sat down across from me, mirrored my pose. You never
talked to me, he said, I know. Why don't you
talk to me? I'm afraid, I said, But I said
it too quiet. What I'm afraid? I said louder I'm afraid.

(23:30):
I'm afraid of you, and I'm afraid of us, and
I'm afraid of this new world we've built that one
day soon it'll be no place for me and everything
I've done and everything I am. I'm afraid of everything
that isn't winter, and I'm afraid of everything but dying.
My eyes were closed, and I couldn't see him, and
I couldn't hear him, and all I heard was my
heart beating out of sink. For a minute, at least,

(23:53):
it was all I heard. I didn't see him move,
but his arms wrapped all the way around me, my
knees and my back. He held me. I let myself go.
He kissed the top of my head, and I nuzzled
into his neck. You do what you do, he said,
and I love you for it. You love me, all stupid,

(24:14):
all covered in blood. I love you, he said. His
hand went into my hair, and he held me like
he used to, He held me like he wanted me.
I took him by the beard and pulled his face
against mine, felt his lips against mine, open mouthed, his
hands went to my hips. My fingers dug into his chest.

(24:37):
Smoke drifted up from the ruins of our home, and
love was something in my gut and it made me
want to live the end. That's the end of the story. Okay,
Hazel says, quote Hazel is a sap who just wants
to let go and find love at the end of
the world. It's very important that the listener know this

(24:58):
is written in all caps. That's what Hazel has to
say about it. And yeah, what do I have to
say about it. It's funny because a lot of the
stuff I want to say about it is structural. But
that's not like the vibe, right, Like the point of
the story isn't the structure of the story, you know,
no more than a the point of a home isn't

(25:20):
the fact that it's like built with two by four,
you know. But to talk about the two y fours
that built this house anyway, I guess I would say that. Okay.
So there's this thing called the trifail sequence and story writing.
If anyone wants a crash course on writing short stories
in the Western tradition, here you go the absolute bare
bones of a traditional Western story. It's not the three

(25:43):
acts structure, it's not the hero's journey. It is the
trifail sequence. A character has a problem, they try to
solve that problem as intelligently as they can, and they
fail and they make things worse. So then they try
to solve that problem again, and they fail and they
make the worse, and then they try again and then
they succeed. That is like the bare Bones story, right,

(26:05):
And if you want to get a little bit more
complicated and a little better, they have an external problem
and the reason that they're failing at solving their external
problem is because they haven't addressed their internal problem. And
it's only by solving their internal problem they're able to
solve their external problem. And that's the trifil sequence. And
the thing that I really wanted to do with this
story was have two interlocking trifail sequences where Aiden, our protagonist,

(26:30):
has two problems. There's the attack on the lodge and
the relationship with Khalil, And in a certain sense, you
could say it's the internal versus the external problem, but
actually in this case it's inverted Aiden, who doesn't have
a gender marker. There's no pronoun for them anywhere in
the story. That was another technical thing that I worked
really hard to do. They're not even avay them. They
just don't have a gender marker. But their internal problem,

(26:54):
this relationship can't be solved until they deal with the
external problem. And that was like the fun thing to do,
right they as a as a writer. But it was
also like, you know, that's not what the story is about.
The story is well love and how who we can
be and how we're more than just this like simple

(27:18):
part of ourselves and these things that we do. Yeah, anyway,
I'm murder kiljoy. The world is ending in the stark
all the time. But spend time with people you love
and eat nourishing food. Rest up, We've got a good
fight ahead of us, and see you in the new
year and love you all. Bye. It could Happen here

(27:38):
as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
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