Today, in Maccab, it’s been 100 years since the event known by different names to the various ethno-geographical atelle. Those that came from the North River, waddling from their warehouses with malt brews in hand and glass beads dangling, celebrate the Reckoning. They tote visual idols, trading fervently with one another. They trickle into the memorial Pit, mixing with the exodus of those from the West Gap. They’ve dressed their toddlers in the finest woolen hats and spun-grass suites to bring in the Great Turn. From atop the Hill, people paraded across the city with their instruments of harvest, between heaps of rubble, boulders, and watering holes.
The calendar has completed its first rotation, and today they will start the counting anew. The Cross-Day has come, the day that broke linear time and so stopped history, if just for a few minutes at a time. The day changed the way Maccabians mark time and progress.
The Memorial trench descends below the roots of the oldest trees alive in Maccab. Thousands of people sit on the clay ledges that spiral down the perimeter, like a staircase. People perch on rock spires, their cheers dropping into the bottom of the pit, where speakers’ voices resonate through glass amplifiers. Delegates from each district tell the story of the blast that shattered Maccab. Some say a bomb turned the streets into rubble, and the Trees capitalized on the cracks. It is also popular opinion that the shifting outward of tectonic plates shook the city, demolishing the Old Grid and forming the gaping trench.
All cheer for the disaster, for the suffering of their ancestors. Amid the poverty and plague, Maccab relearned the art of temperance. Now they traverse the city with the grace of slow plants, sowing their culture into the soil, to be shared with Glitterbugs and turmeric.
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