PodCastle

* Author : A. T. Greenblatt
* Narrator : Tatiana Grey
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.


Rated PG.
SFX used in the host spot of this episode can be found here:
https://freesound.org/people/univ_lyon3/sounds/250589
https://freesound.org/people/zimbot/sounds/122983
https://freesound.org/people/alanmcki/sounds/401324
A Place to Grow
By A. T. Greenblatt
Lillian was wearing one of her uncles’ old suits again. Her family always wore suits when they were going to tear down a world.
Trouble was that this world, unlike the dozens before it, had started to feel like home.
You don’t know that for sure, Lillian reminded herself as she strode through her dying garden, fists clenched at her side. You never had a home.
Trouble was, her uncles got bored of the worlds they built so quickly. So now the last of her daisies, tulips, and lilies surrounded her like sickly, wilting walls, praying for one last glimpse of sunlight before they died.
A useless prayer. Her uncles had dismantled the sun two days ago.
I’m not going to let them gut this world and put it on a shelf, Lillian thought as she weaved her way through the garden. Not this time. She didn’t bother picking up the hems of her pants dragging through the dirt or tucking in her arms so that her baggy sleeves didn’t catch on the yellowing leaves. She let her garden cling to her like her uncles’ hopes and plans that one day she would be like them and build worlds of her own.
Her uncles’ suits never had fit her well.
Lillian stole a quick glance back at the house in the middle of her sprawling garden. With a bit of luck, Uncle Simon and Uncle Arthur wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t packing. By now, they should be so consumed with their own preparations, they would forget to look out the window. They would miss her oversized clothes and her telltale face and hands, which even from a distance looked like a quilt made from many different skins. They wouldn’t see her walking away.
And if they did . . . well, they’d be furious. They’d tell her she was wasting her time. Her energy. Her abilities, on a flawed, doomed world.
Which might be true. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.
You need to understand the risks first, she reminded herself.
The Wall. She needed to see the Wall, or rather, what was beyond it now. She needed to understand what it was like to be without a world.
Her uncles’ town surrounded the house and garden in a perfect circle. So did the Wall, except that surrounded the town. The flaws in this world became more visible the farther she walked. There were deep cracks in the road, air temperature fluctuations every few steps, places where the water main broke so frequently that the glass foundation gleamed through the patches of eroded earth. A few townies stood on their lantern-lit porches from the homes that lined the road, raising a hand as she walked by. Worry and hope mixed in their expressions. Her uncles had promised to build everyone a new, better home, but right now,