Gerolde considered himself brave. He feared nothing except loneliness and the forest and, yet, he felt so miserable and alone that sixteenth summer that he had asked the maker to make him a friend. But once made, she needed help to walk because the maker was growing weak and had made her broken.

Marithe held to his arm as he helped her along the worn path between home and the meadow. In the meadow, a stone bench rested under a swelling tree. A cool spot to rest. Marithe's knees were bent oddly inward. Her bare feet bent outward. Gerolde could tell that walking hurt her but she didn't complain. Instead she walked quietly, watching the path for roots and rocks, and clutching his arm with satisfying strength.

"I'm sorry I am not perfect," she said for the fifth time.

Gerolde turned his head away, ashamed that he had counted the times. "Let me get you to the bench. Then we can talk."

The bench was identical to another bench on the hill that overlook the ocean. Each was a single stone laid sideways on the ground like a log, but flat on top. Made, it would seem, to be sat upon.

Gerolde heard Marithe let out a tiny breath of relief as she sat. She pulled her dress back a bit adjusted her legs for comfort, then smoothed her dress back down. She looked a Gerolde and smiled, but Gerolde felt uncomfortable and hung his head as if in thought.

"Father fizzled away last winter," he said. "I didn't know he was made. He never told me he was." He told her how, after his mother died, all he had was father who taught him to hunt and fish, and never to lie. But in the end his father lied to him without saying a word. Gerolde woke up one morning and heard sound of a large fizzle. He thought it was something big, like a table or a piece of the house. But when he looked into his father's sleep area he saw it was his father. Vanished into just a puddle of fiz, then nothing.

"Both your father and mother were made, you know." Marithe placed her hand on his knee. "Everything here is made. This bench, your house, the fence bordering the path to the maker. Even me."

"I know that now. But I just couldn't get over the lie of it."

"Don't blame them," Marithe said. "They were made for only one purpose, and you know that. They were made to give birth to you, a born human, not a made human. You're the first of a kind."

Gerolde hunched his shoulders and bent his head further down. He felt as if he might cry. "I know that. Of course I do. I watched the made animals breed, and I saw their offspring grow old and die without ever fizzing away. But when my mother died, it never occurred to me that she was made. She died like a born animal. We buried her."

Marithe leaned close and kissed him on the cheek. "Yes, but your mother, as you say, fizzed away too after she died and was buried. You just couldn't see it because it happened underneath the dirt."

Gerolde stood and walked away. Not far. Just out of the shade and stopped with is back to Marithe. He stood in the sun, felt its warmth, and looked back at his house, and beyond that at the forest, and beyond the forest the high grey cliffs.

He felt guilty about Marithe. He'd asked the maker for a friend, not a girl friend, and it bothered him that she sat close and touched him and kissed him.

Gerolde had been eight years old when his father had first taken him to see the maker at the place where the forest meets the cliffs. "Gerolde," said his father. "I think you are finally old enough to ask for things responsibly from the maker. The maker can only make so many things, so if you ask for too much too soon, it will never be able to make things again."

"Yes, father," he said. "I'll be careful."

What he hadn't known then, but learned by himself, later, was that as the maker grew weak, its made things that did not last and, more and more often, those things came out broken.

The maker was in a cave cut into the solid cliff face. Bones littered the ground in front of the cave's opening, but the opening was protected by a locked iron gate. His father told him the gate was there to keep bears out.

Because this was his first visit, his father made a great show of extracting the key from his pocket, unfolding it, centering it precisely in the hole and rotating it one-half turn counter-clockwise.

The gate made a tiny ping and opened by itself silently.

The cave was an absolutely smooth half circle cut into the stone. The walls were so smooth they reflected light like glass. At the end, fifty or so paces in, was a large stone shelf. That was all. No designs. No clues. Just a plain smooth shelf.

"Now son, the winter will be here soon and we'll have to cut logs for the stove so that we can stay warm. The old axe fizzled away mid-summer so we need a new axe blade. We could ask for steel but that would drain the maker more. We'll have to sharpen an iron axe ten times more often than we would steel, but iron is easy for the maker, and doesn't drain it near as much as steel."

Gerolde remembered his lessons. Wood and stone were almost nothing to the maker. That's why Gerolde had so very many wooden toys as a child. Soft metals cost less than hard metals. Glass cost a lot and life cost the most of all.

His father joked on the way in that Gerolde's first made thing would be an dragon. A live thing that would drain the maker completely, but which would be too large to ever escape from the cave. Gerolde felt embarrassed but laughed.

His father looked at him and gestured with his hands for Gerolde to remain absolutely quite. Then his father faced the shelf and said, "Maker-o-maker, maker-o-maker, o-maker, make me...." The shelf began to glow.

And his father paused here to enunciate his words, "one hand-width wide bladed iron axe head."

The yellow glow went out and on the shelf rested one iron axe head.

Now, in the sunshine, with his back to the stone bench, Gerolde heard Marithe say, "Don't be mad at me. Please don't be mad at me."

Gerolde turned and looked at her. She was sitting upright with good posture on the bench, pretty in a way, but with bent legs. He knew he couldn't blame her for any of the things that had happened, so he went back and sat next to her again.

"What does it feel like," he asked without thinking. "You know, to know you are made?"

"I don't think your mother or father knew, if that is what you are trying to ask. Otherwise they could never have raised you. If they had known they were made, like I know I am, they would be consumed with thoughts of their end. I envy them," She nudged him with her elbow. "They must have lived thinking they were real, thinking they would die naturally and be buried. They must have believed they would be with you for years and years, until they were so old you would have to take care of them."

Gerolde told her about his mother's death. How he and his father were wading in the ocean that day. There were no clouds, no wind. Even the ocean was calm, with happy waves no higher than his ankles.

There was a boom and the ground shook hard under his feet. He fell but his father helped him up. The ocean ran away and left them standing on bare sand. His father knew, from before, that the ocean would rush back again, bigger than ever, so they ran back toward the cliffs, and hurried back up the little path toward the top.

Above them and toward the forest, Gerolde's mother leaned over the cliff and yelled for them to run. The ground shook again and the piece of cliff she was standing on split off. All Gerolde saw was a cloud of dirt as it fell to the sand below.

Gerolde could see from way off that his mother was broken and dead. Gerolde's father made him stay where he was. His father gathered her up and carried her home. Gerolde followed far back. That night they both cried. The next day they buried her.

Marithe made a hurting sound and held out her hand. As Gerolde watched, her hand curled in on itself, the fingers bending in a way they shouldn't bend. Marithe moaned and hid the hand with fabric from here dress, ashamed of what was happening to her.

Marithe coughed, then coughed again. Gerolde noticed tiny spots of blood on her dress.

"Can you get me so water? Please." Marithe covered her mouth and coughed once more.

Gerolde jumped up. "Yes, yes. I'll get you water. You stay here. I'll run and be right back."

Gerolde ran.

Two winters after his mother died, Gerolde's father brought home a new mother. Gerolde could tell she was made because, although she looked normal in every way, she lacked a mouth. In the area where her mouth should have been, Gerolde's father had tried to cut open a mouth, but had given up, leaving a small hole, the width of a finger, that whistled when she breathed.

She lasted fifty days, then fizzled away while hanging clothes to dry.

That same afternoon, Gerolde's father confessed to him that he had been wrong ask the maker to make a new wife for himself. "I was lonely, you see. I couldn't help myself. I was weak, and because I was weak I destroyed our future, and made another living person suffer."

"That's all right father." Gerolde said, "I understand," but he really didn't.

"From now on, I'll teach you to live off the land. That's the thing to do! We won't go to the maker any more. We'll make everything for ourselves with the materials we have here."

And they did. Gerolde learned to hunt for game and how to dress and cook the meat. He learned how to carry water in a cured, sewed-shut animal hide. They learned together what to eat and not to eat. For that year, he and his father were closer to each other than ever before. And not once did they ever speak of the made mother again.

Now, Gerolde lowered a skin container into the shallow well and pulled up water for Marithe. The well was next to the house, on the side where his parents slept. It was there that Gerolde found his father the morning his father died, fizzing away like a made person. He felt betrayed, lied to, and very alone.

That morning he'd gone back to the maker thinking he would ask for a dog or a puppy. A companion to explore with and have fun with. He had his father's key and opened the gate. He didn't know what overcame him in the moment of asking, but instead of asking for a dog he asked for a friend -Marithe.

Now, as he returned with the water, he saw Marithe was hugging herself and rocking side to side slowly, as if her insides hurt.

"Are you okay?" he said.

She stopped rocking, looked up at him and smiled. "Don't worry about me."

Gerolde gave her the water and watched her drink, the whole cup at once.

"Thanks." She said setting the cup on the bench.

She tried to smile but couldn't. "I'd like to move to the bench by the ocean. The ocean makes me calm."

Gerolde tried to help her stand but her legs no longer worked.

"Can you carry me?"

"Of course." He showed her his muscles. "I'm really strong."

"Well pick me up. I won't bite."

Gerolde picked her up and felt her put her good arm around his neck. She was warm and felt lighter than he expected but comfortable next to him.

The second bench was a the end of their small valley, then up a low hill, a short walk on a pleasant day. He set her down on the bench, facing the ocean. He felt a cool breeze on his back and turned to stare at the water. In the distance, a white haze obscured the horizon. To the right, low green hills and endless beach disappeared in the distance. To the left the beach ended and cliffs dropped straight into the ocean. The dark and impenetrable forest spread like a thunder cloud over the land, as far as he could see.

"There are many other makers," Marithe told him. "Beyond the forest." She nodded toward the forest, and Gerolde felt a chill of fear. "Other makers have made other parents who have made real children like yourself."

Gerolde stared at her. "How do you know that? Why are you making something like that up?"

"I am made, remember." She reached out her hand and touched his arm with her finger tips. "Made people, like me, and like your parents were, are made with all our memories and thoughts already inside our heads. I don't know how I know, but I do, and it is the truth."

"My father told me never to go far into the forest. There are bears there, and wolves."

Marithe laughed at that and coughed. "Silly," she said. There aren't any more bears. There are a few made wolves but they'll fizzle away soon. They never succeeded in making real wolves, perhaps they were too solitary. The forest is safe."

Gerolde looked at it again. He felt his childhood fears clawing at the back of his thoughts. But the old fears were not completely there anymore. At sixteen he was turning into a man, and his childhood fears were dissolving.

Marithe coughed, then controlled herself. "Can I have some more water?"

"I'm sorry. I should have brought the whole skin of water and a cup up here with you. I'll get some more."

Again he ran, but this time only to the bottom of the hill. He stopped because he heard a loud fizzling. He felt his heart lodged in his throat. Afraid, he turned and looked back up the hill. He was relieved to see that only the bench had fizzled dumping Marithe to the grass. She looked so surprised sitting there, holding herself up with her good arm. He laughed. He couldn't help himself. The relief was so intense that he bent double with laughter.

Then he heard Marithe call out, "No. Not now. Please no!"

Still laughing he looked up at her with an idiot grin on his face. She looked terrified but smiled back at him as she fizzled away to nothing. He stood dumbly, wiped a tear of laughter from his eyes, and stared at the empty hill. He felt foolish and stupid, and terribly alone.

The next morning, Gerolde stood at the edge of the forest and looked in at the darkness. He wore the same animal-skin coat his father had made and worn. A skin of water hung from his shoulder. A rolled blanket containing food was on his back. He carried a wooden spear with a stone tip. None of it was made, he was pretty sure of that.

He thought about his mother and his father and thought a fond good-bye to them. He winced as he thought about his second mother, but wished her well too and promised never to forget her. Then he thought about Marithe and the memory of her made him feel guilty and sad. He felt his cheek sting with the guilt of causing her to be made, but promised to always remember her too.

The sky was pure blue. The day would be warm and cloudless. Gerolde squared his shoulder, gripped his spear firmly, and stepped into the forest.

End

This story was originally published in the Winter 2005, Volume 23, issue of Peridot Books .
© 2004 Bryan Costales
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See also: Happiest by Bryan Costales ° In Another Laundromat by George Jansen ° Over the River by George Jansen