The web's first magazine devoted to stories about life in giant artificial structures created by forces beyond human comprehension

Somnambulis

by Megan Arkenberg

The year she died
a man came to Somnambulis.
Not in the usual way—the joining
of man and woman
and years of breath and water—no,
he came fully formed
like every man we had ever seen, except
for this:
we had never seen him before
and he had not been born
in Somnambulis.

The year she died
she went to speak to him
in his rooms at the edge—of the world,
we thought then, though he said
it was only the edge of the city.
The rooms were dim and dusty,
filled with walls
and empty floors.
He had brought nothing with him

but stories—and in the year
she died
he told her stories
of trees that grew outside of roofs
and birds that didn’t live
in cages.
He spoke of rivers
that ran until they emptied
into vast wells as large
as worlds: he said
just such a river had taken him
to Somnambulis.

In the year she died,
she asked him if
just such a river
could take her out.

Towards the end
of the year she died
when the air froze
and the river grew cold in its bank
she wove together
a couch of reeds,
set out from the market place
on the rush of the water
until she was out of sight.

The year she died
we looked for her, all of us,
even the man
who had come to Somnambulis
but the river was winding
with many heads
and the walls were old and broken
and we lost our way.
The year she died
we came back defeated
to the center of Somnambulis
and waited for the river
to wash her frozen body up.

The year after she died
I began to search
for a way out.


Megan Arkenberg is a writer and poet from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work has recently appeared in Byzarium, Aoife's Kiss, and Hadley Rille Books' Ruins Metropolis anthology.  She also edits a small fantasy e-zine, Mirror Dance.