Fill the Earth

“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth….”

 I can replicate myself.

 I can replicate myself….

 Light steals into the warehouse. Iron hoppers of grain are gliding in on narrow rails. A yellow haze hangs over all.

Who is the Original? I am the Original, and so are all my sisters.

Trays of milled grain are being carried to the outbuildings. A smell of baking bread wars with the fug of steam.

One of the workers is talking to three smaller beings. They gaze up at her trustingly. She explains about the hoppers. In another week tomatoes will arrive, to make jam.

 “But you are far too young to help with that,” She leads them to a cupboard of brooms.

Then they, all of them, hear a humming. A roaring. It is their own roar, because a small purple door by the kitchens has opened at last. It is Her.

I pull my three hatchlings close to me. How dare I. Birth them. Only Her does that. My insides feel like glue, my heart throbs. But she walks through our midst unattended; she strides by, ignoring us, and shivering with relief, I gaze after Her. She is as big as any two of us, sinuous and dark. She leaves a heady fragrance in her wake, of cinnamon, lilac, and black pepper. Her eyes as they flash by unseeing are black suns. With the dignity of age she advances to the hatch and passes through; her slender back retreats beyond the awestruck loading sisters and driving sisters, frozen beside their lorries. As we cluster to look she disappears into the woods.

My daughters, bright-eyed, eventually return to their sweeping. Except for one, who whispers to me with clouded face that she has pain. Something makes me touch her midriff. There’s a trembling.

I take her to the nursery. The room is full to overflowing with sisters lying in corners and tiny wrapped bundles on wooden cots and nursing sisters bending over them with a finger dipped in gruel. I settle my daughter on a mat that I unroll from the store cupboard and promise I will bring her dinner. Watch the others. Don’t be afraid to call for help, I tell her.

She clones that night – just the one. Over the next few days I see more and more of us leaving our work, even the grinding, to lie in corners, sighing. It is true, then, what the breeze whispered to me through the hatch as the Queen departed: we do not need Her. Who once created all, who was capable of giving birth to males and other Hers, and us. We can replicate ourselves.

We can replicate ourselves. It started when lightning struck the warehouse, a blue dazzle. As soon as the sheaves in the yard caught fire, there was a commotion around the small door, as guards rushed to hustle Her far away, to the remote corridors of the building. The smoke spread its black nets over us, the nursery sealed itself with a clang, the flame snaked through a trail of leavings in the main yard and leaped up to the eaves.

Every regiment of sisters ran to the single pump with the fire buckets and we quickly made a line, but the eaves crashed on the first waiting four, the fire hissed in triumph, the tufted flames from the warehouse had meanwhile crept into the warehouse on to the wheat in the hoppers and the chaff flung out by the grinder. This golden haze caught fire, exploded and choked 23 of us, 23 of us from the time when we still had names.

We hummed and droned in our distress but Her did not come and we thought she too was dead. The grave-digging in a long ditch around the nearest field, the interring, the repairs, passed by a mist of gloom. We scrubbed the warehouse endlessly. On the twelfth day I felt the stirring, the miracle, my three were born, alike as three peas – but it had happened to several others, too, and in any case the gladness was quiet, we still looked for a second Her.

Now it is happening to others, to most of us. I feel new stirrings, we are lying about everywhere, we can't move: against the iron hoopers, against the wall of hooks and cloaks, against the lorries, the cold ovens and the empty cauldrons - and all that happens is that we sigh and the slick bundles appear in twos or threes, ourselves in every detail, but smaller. I can replicate myself. We will be forced to do terrible things - we try to tend them as they cry but there are no sisters in the fields, no grain or bread.

Each one of us is Her. Although we may end up feeding them to each other we know now what it feels like - the indolence, the terrible power – of bringing into being a creature that will die.

I can replicate myself.

I can replicate myself.

I can...