The Rift of Santa Rosa
A Lunar Awards Prompt Quest Story
If you participated in or have been keeping an eye on Brian Reindel’s Prompt Quest, you may have seen this story already. I shared it to the Gathering thread (I included the link below so that you can read all the wonderful sci-fi and fantasy stories people shared) earlier this week, but now I’m officially sending out “The Rift of Santa Rosa”. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
Look at her – ten fingers. Ten toes. A little rosebud mouth already open and hungry. Pink cheeks, perfect and warm.
A footfall echoed in the caverns outside the claustrophobic cave where Winnet hid, and she pressed herself against the rough stone wall. Without a sound, she reached out, snuffed her lantern, and clutched the baby tighter to her chest. Winnet’s aching body protested each movement, her every nerve raw and alert.
Keep quiet, little one, she willed. But how was she to keep a newborn baby silent?
Selah, Absalom, and Prue – would they see their mother again, would they know their little sister? They had wailed at their births, being pulled from the warm, quiet dark to the hot, dry ground of Santa Rosa. But this baby, this serious, tiny girl, simply peered through the chilly, quiet dark around her as though greeting it like a familiar face. Were it not for her pink cheeks and wide eyes, Winnet would have worried there was something wrong with her silent baby.
She pressed the soft cheek to hers. You came early, little one.
Footsteps pattered outside her hiding place. Louder now – quick, heavy, human. A seeker returning? How much time had passed while she smothered wails of agony, praying the keen-eared abominations of the Rift wouldn’t hear?
A bolt of fear stabbed through Winnet. Was she running out of time now, when she was bleeding and shaking and unable even to run?
The footsteps came closer, until they passed just outside her hidden alcove.
Perhaps he was young, quick, full of energy – one of the earliest seekers to return, afraid to go further than necessary from the sunlight. She might still have hope.
Then, outside her cave – a shuffle, a slipping of rocks, the echoing thunk of a goblet clattering to stone, the treacherous sound ricocheting off the cavern walls.
Winnet froze.
The footsteps stopped; the heavy breaths went silent. Terror hung in the cave, the air shot through with unnatural stillness.
At last Winnet caught the faint sounds of slow, careful movement. The quiet shifting of feet, the swish of the goblet being picked up once more. The footsteps moved again, softer now.
That’s when she heard it – a chittering in the cave walls.
Someone was this seeker’s mother. He was someone’s baby. Winnet opened her mouth to call out a warning, but her second instinct swallowed the noise. She clenched her eyes shut, wishing she could close her ears as well.
Yet it was strange how little noise there was, when it happened. He didn’t even have time to scream. A hiss, a squelch. The rattling clatter of treasure falling to stone.
More chittering, and the whisper of a body dragged across the cavern floor into a winding, ancient tunnel to be devoured.
Winnet let out a breath, her throat thick with sobs. She needed to move, now. The wet, thick smell of new life permeated the hidden cave, slick with blood and fluid, and, sooner or later, the creatures would catch the baby’s scent in the stale air, and swarm.
The upper catacombs around her were empty, long ago picked clean of burial treasure by other seekers. But she had to find something of value – anything. She couldn’t return to the collectors emptyhanded, not with the children hungry, not with Quill lost to the Rift –
Clutching the moonstone amulet at her throat, Winnet caught her thoughts before they spiraled into that chasm of grief that threatened to drag her down deeper than the soil, deeper than the caves, deeper than this Rift that seemed to stab straight to the world’s molten core.
Not Quill, not now.
Winnet closed her eyes, breathing in the stagnant cave air.
Noontide. She was too deep in the offshoots of the upper caverns to glimpse the sun. How long had she been in labor, after she’d crawled, between heaving waves of pain, into this tiny, hidden place? One hour? Two, three? Had the sun passed its zenith, leaving her in a hopeless race against time to scramble for the surface before the sun set and the Rift closed, trapping any stragglers in the mysterious, ancient tombs?
Holding her warm, silent baby closer to her, Winnet ran her finger along the uncut moonstone, her wedding amulet. They’d sold the gold chain years earlier in exchange for sanctuary, and now a thin leather band held her last heirloom, the one remnant of their wealth.
Through the pitch blackness, Winnet squinted at the moonstone.
It was glowing.
She’d heard it whispered, up in Santa Rosa, that the Rift’s strange sorcery was infectious, leeching into objects and even people. Never before had she seen it with her own eyes.
Winnet drew in a shaky breath and tucked the shimmering amulet inside the neckline of her dress. A glowing rock was the least of her worries now.
Though she strained her ears, Winnet heard no footsteps or chittering from the nearby caves, and she lit her lantern once again.
Ripping strips of cloth from her ragged cloak, she bound her exhausted body as a warrior binds their wounds, then wrapped a long piece around her shoulders and deflated abdomen as a makeshift sling. She slipped the tiny, sleeping girl into the fabric, wrapping her tight so that her cheek pressed into the soft dent just below Winnet’s collarbone.
Stay asleep, little one. With both hands free, Winnet grasped the walls of the rocky alcove and began to ease herself up so she could stand.
Suddenly her handhold crumbled beneath her weight. She slipped, landing hard on the floor with a smothered shriek of pain.
Winnet froze, listening for clawed footsteps approaching to investigate the sound. But none came.
When she shifted her weight to struggle back to her feet, Winnet’s finger found something unexpected, something smooth as water and hard as marble.
Under the faint gleam of her lantern, Winnet dusted through the broken piece of the cave wall, and she found it.
Wiping it clean with the frayed edge of her sleeve, she held before her eyes a ring, its band the rich gold of sunset, set with a ruby deep and dark as quick-flowing blood.
It wasn’t much – a beautiful trifle, really. But it was something, perhaps enough to placate the collectors, to convince them not to raise the interest rate again.
The interest. Winnet’s chest tightened in an exhausted anger that hovered dangerously close to despair. They would have paid their debt twice over by now without the suffocating interest that kept growing and growing.
Even emptyhanded, she would be lucky to make it to the surface before the Rift closed. But this ring, it was something, at least.
Winnet slipped it onto her finger and hobbled toward the hole that led to the main cavern.
It was not until she paused by the hole to listen for danger that she realized something had changed.
She had not noticed the rocks weeping, dripping little droplets of water onto the cave floor, until suddenly the constant, gentle plink was gone. There were no footsteps, no whisper of a breeze making its way from the Rift’s opening.
All was silent.
Then, from deep in the small tomb, came a rumble, a groaning. Tiny pieces of rock and dust rose, hovering in the air.
Winnet backed up against the cave wall, clutching her baby. With a swirl of wind, the rocks and dust whipped into a roaring cyclone, pushing Winnet off the cave wall and into the center of the tight room. The wind thrashed the very air from her lungs, but Winnet curled herself over her tiny baby.
Free me. A thread of voices rasped in Winnet’s mind, at once keening and bone-deep.
Free me, and you will never want again.
Around her the rocks and notches of the cave transformed into shining, glimmering gold. Goblets encrusted with precious stones, draping necklaces and thick golden bracelets, coins gleaming as though fresh from a bath of vinegar, all scattered throughout the cave with careless ease. All that she and Quill had once possessed in those far-away years, before their panicked flight under a shroud of darkness, abandoning all the riches they could not carry. All of it and more.
Then, like breath turned to fog on a chilly morning, a figure appeared, red as firelight.
Free me.
“How?” Winnet’s voice struggled from her throat. “How do I free you?”
Sacrifice.
“I have nothing to offer.” Winnet backed away toward the hole that led to the main cavern, but the wind shoved against her like a wall. She pulled at the ring on her finger, but it welded to her skin like a strange, cancerous growth.
Riches to outshine the wealth of kings. The finest meat, the ripest fruit for your children, who will never again know hunger.
“I have nothing.”
The smoky figure circled her, its voice echoing in her head. Sacrifice. One moment for a lifetime of plenty.
“My lamp.” Her voice and hands shaking, Winnet held out her rusted lantern. “It’s all I have.”
In the sharp pain that clenched within her mind, she sensed the figure’s refusal. Cold sweat broke on Winnet’s forehead, and the cyclone whipped it away.
You will never fear again, never flee. Comfort and security for your children and your children’s children.
“Take this.” She yanked her precious moonstone over her head. Her last vestige of Quill, lost and dead and gone – gone, gone from her, forever, somewhere within these wretched cavern walls. “Here, take it. It’s the most valuable thing I own. All I have. Take it.”
The moonstone’s strange light glowed brighter now, an island of white in the fiery, golden cave.
I care nothing for trinkets.
Panic clamped like a vise around Winnet’s heart. The figure’s roiling red hand reached toward the tiny, warm body pressed into her chest.
Her baby girl let out a sudden, wailing cry.
“No!” Winnet hurled her lantern at the shadowy figure. It dodged aside like a wisp of smoke, and the wind’s howl turned to a snarl.
The false, golden light darkened, and the figure rose with the ravenous fury of wildfire.
Sacrifice.
The light of the moonstone shooting between her fingers, Winnet stabbed the amulet into the smoky blaze. The figure shimmered away from the stone and blasted upward in a spiteful mass of heat, knocking her to the hard ground.
Winnet cried out as the impact sent shuddering spasms of pain through her already aching body.
Selah, Absalom, Prue – what would become of her babies above on the surface? Forced to delve ever deeper into the Rift, repaying the endlessly mounting debt of their parents?
Her babies.
Heat, fury, fire – looming over her, rushing around her. The figure’s monstrous, screeching cacophony of voices.
Free me.
She lashed out with the moonstone, her only pathetic weapon, but the fiery figure burned hotter, closer.
Sacrifice!
The rough edges of the moonstone pressed into her palm as a burning hand reached for her littlest daughter. Winnet curled her body around her baby, a last shield against the hungry flames.
In her hand, the moonstone blasted with sudden, white-hot light, and Winnet dropped it to the gold-covered ground.
The figure’s crackling voice screamed, its fury morphing to fear at the whistle of a slicing blade.
Winnet scrambled backward, shielding her eyes against the sudden light.
The moonstone, still tethered to the flimsy leather strap, hovered in the air, shooting its ethereal glow in a cascade of silvery light, dimming the otherworldly glow of the smoky figure’s gold.
A new shadow stood in the cave, a curved sword in its hand. It swung again at the monster, the blade arcing in a fierce slash that ripped through the fire and heat, leaving a black, hollow rent in the flames.
A wail, a screech – lashing limbs that licked with tongues of flame at the shadow warrior as he swung again. But the gold and jewels and coins and riches crumpled into ash.
In a rush, the wind, the flames, the entrapping cyclone, all fell at the rounded shadow blade and collapsed, rushing, flooding into the thin golden band grafted to Winnet’s skin.
A flash of searing pain ripped across Winnet’s finger, and she let out a strangled shriek. A hiss as of molten metal cooled in water, and the ring slipped from her finger and tumbled to the cave floor.
All was silent.
Lowering his sword, the shadow man turned toward Winnet with slow, deliberate steps. He was all blackness, a silhouette, but she recognized his form as though he were a missing piece of her own broken heart.
Another white, glowing moonstone shimmered in the shadow, the only light in the darkness of him. Her breath tightening, her chest aching, Winnet reached out her hand.
A shadow hand reached back, hovering over her skin, then over the downy, dark-haired head of their daughter.
She longed for his face, to see his eyes once more, one last time. But the shadow was all blackness, the absence of him, the darkness of the space where Quill wasn’t.
A drip of cave water fell with a gentle plink.
Then, as suddenly as he’d appeared, he was gone, and her glowing moonstone dropped from the air, clattering to the damp, rocky ground.
Breath raked once more into Winnet’s lungs, and her heart stabbed beneath her ribs, at once broken and full.
She kissed the soft, sweet-smelling head of her baby girl and knelt to light her fallen lantern. Tottering, she made her way toward the larger passage.
Then she stopped.
An instinct, an urging from somewhere deep within her, made her turn back.
Winnet searched with her dim lantern light until she found it – the thin golden band set with a blood-red ruby. Fear and misgiving pricked her spine, but she pushed handfuls of rock and debris over the small ring, burying it in a shallow grave.
She stood, cradling her little girl. Ester. A name of queens, a little star.
With slow, painful steps, she climbed back to the main cavern.
Just outside her hidden cave, beside a smeared trail of blood, lay a haphazard pile of treasure. A few goblets, an ancient text. A jewel-encrusted dagger inscribed with strange markings.
Winnet gathered all she could carry, tucking it into her dress and the sling where Ester nestled. It wouldn’t repay the debt, or the crushing interest. But it would be enough, just for today. Enough to feed her family.
Then, pricking her ears for any movement, any hiss or snarl of the abominations, Winnet nuzzled her baby’s head and walked, as quickly as she could on her shaking legs, upward toward the sunlight and the hot, dry desert sand.
Thank you so much for reading!
This was written for the Prompt Quest started by
of the Lunar Awards.
The fantasy prompt about catacombs deep within a planet’s core immediately made me think of a setting that my husband created for a homebrewed Dungeons & Dragons campaign (because we are NERRRRDS), so I took that idea and ran with it. Santa Rosa, the setting he created, is designed as a weird-Western fantasy, which, although most of the Western elements didn’t make it into my final draft, adds flavor to the backstory.
If you’ve read many of my stories, you may have noticed that family, and specifically birth, often play a large role in the stories and their themes. I am fascinated by birth and occasionally work as a doula for family and friends, so you get a taste of that in this story.
Please read through more fantasy and science fiction stories from this Prompt Quest over at the Gathering! I’m just scratching the surface so far, but there are some incredible stories there!
You build the world so effectively and the tension just keeps mounting - I was gripped! The post-partum pain, smells and emotions were spot-on. The wraith-like descriptions in the darkness reminded me of Aragorn summoning the Army of the Dead. Great stuff!
Yes! It's so rare for someone to write the post birth mother and newborn baby in a believable manner. I love this. I was terrified you'd have her sacrifice the baby. And Quill!