Ninth Story Studios giving story a voice. Welcome to the list, Get ready
to take the ride. Hello, I'm Daniel Foytech, and I thank you
for joining us for a special episode of Victoria's Lift. Today, we're presenting
the fifth chapter of our ten part mini series by Christopher Long, did Those
who Thrive in the Dark. This mini series dives deep into the mythos of
Victoria's world and features Victoria facing ancient gods, fay folk, ghosts, monsters,
old enemies, and a certain little brother with ulterior motives. Before we
get started today, a big thank you to those who are supporting the show.
Those supporting the show at the five dollars a month level and above are
hearing these episodes first, since it's you that have made this project possible.
This series will also be released as a novella at the end of the run,
with an expanded story that takes you deeper into our world. Now,
hold on tight, and let's go for a ride into the shadows when Victoria's
Left. Victoria's Lift to Those who Thrive in the Dark, Chapter five,
Weaving Spiders Come Not Here by Christopher Long. You know the problem with archaeology,
all that digging down makes you people believe history is dead and buried,
contained neatly beneath your mode lawns and freshly painted tarmac roads, pinned forever under
the foundations of your houses. Well, let me tell you history is never
that far away, and if it gets the urge, history can reach out
and change the present any time it wants. It's hidden in song lyrics.
It's burning behind the eyes of every grudge inherited down through the gene pool.
History is in your road signs. It's in your town names. Now,
I guess you know all about the history of your town. Back in the
thirties, this area was flooded with refugees victims of the Black Blizzard. And
when meadows really started with these homesteaders whose land had risen up and tried to
kill them after a hip blind to them and tried to choke them, leaving
some porcels coughing up lumps of dirt. There was nothing plain about the plains
back then. Some folks dashed their hard earned land patents in what their meager
belongs and headed west in rickety old trucks, leaving the rotting bread basket of
America far behind. Others stayed unable to admit defeat, or simply because flight
wasn't an option for them. Take the Larsons. They were trapped in a
home which had been sold to them on the promise wheat was worth more than
gold. Instead, it became a web of debt as they spent on credit
hoping to buy better machinery to farm the land which kept trying to bury them
alive. Their crops had been shredded by the blizzards, and most of what
they did manage to tell wasn't worth much at all. It certainly never earned
them any gold. Jacob Larson was the eldest of the five children, barely
in double figures. He'd worked on that farm day after day until he was
too tired to stand, helping his father dig out the tractor or the plow
in an effort to find something they could harvest, even if it was just
for the family to eat that night. Yackele, we need to get inside.
These days you look up and see rain clouds and think your day is
ruined. Back then, the Larsons would see a black horizon crashing down on
them, with flocks of birds struggling to fly ahead of it. Every single
one of those storms must have felt like it was coming to end their world
once and for all. Come on, boy, hush not children, It
will be all right. Look, here's Papa and Jacobe to keep us safe.
While his father boarded the windows and hung wet sheets over the doorways,
Jacob had to search the walls for cracks before stuffing rags and glue into every
offending gap, not that anything could keep the blizzard out completely. Their meals,
their drinks, their beds, every comfort came in a thick layer of
scratchy, black dirt. Nothing was safe. Jacob had watched the wind nearly
lift the roof off their home before he'd seen his father reaching up, straining
to hold it in place. We need water. It'll have to wait until
the storm passes with who knows how long the storm will last. My love,
I'll go no, Yacob, I'll be fine, Mamma. I'm small
and fast. It Tabilan. Whether it was bravery or not tis hard to
say. Jacob was certainly what you'd call determined. He'd grown up resilient in
the shadow of the dust it had consumed his childhood, one storm at a
time. He was used to the sudden drops in temperature. The sight of
the chickens roosting in the middle of the day convinced it was night. The
dead rabbits he'd find scattered underfoot in the aftermath, dead from exhaustion, their
lungs packed with dirt. That day, like every day, he simply wanted
to help his family to survive, so he took the bucket and headed for
the door. Jaco, don't fass, mamma. I know the way to
the well by heart. You'll need this. He wrapped the wet bandanna she
handed him over his face, and fought his way out into the wind,
into the swirling black swarm. Jacob knew how many steps would get him to
the well. He'd walked the short path a thousand times before, night and
day. Only this storm was crueler than most. It wouldn't let him see
past the tip of his nose. It tore his clothes as the gales conspired
to rearrange the world, hiding every landmark, stealing every clue that told him
he was on the right track. He'd heard stories of people getting lost between
their yards and their houses when a blizzard. It Not all of them survived,
or there was their neighbor mister Kelly, who'd been blinded in his car
after being blown clear off the road where the dead Whitman babies his father and
mother had whispered about after his youngest siblings were in their bed. Some nights,
Jacob felt like he could hear those buckled little whitman bodies crawling across the
floor towards his exposed toes. That day, alone in the storm, he
fought to keep the terrors at bay, Clutching his bucket, leaning into the
wind, he thought he saw some shape slipping past him in the maelstrom.
He worked hard to convince himself it wasn't there until it came too close to
be ignored. It was too large to be a dog or a wolf,
so vast it could have almost been a bear, a bear that was whispering
his name. Yakob, Yakob, Yakob, can you see him? I
searched upon. They searched high and low for the boy. They found no
sign of him, only his bucket hanging on its rope half way down the
well. They searched, and they waited, and they pray, but Jacob
never returned. No one ever found his body. It took weeks before the
family were able to admit that he was gone. It's my fault, It's
no one's fault. He wanted to help, He always wanted to help.
I I can't stay here any more, round this, not after this,
And where should we go? California? You heard the stories. People are
living in camps, theree like cattle. I didn't travel all the way to
America to live in a shack. We are living in a shack, a
shack in the very middle of how nothing can carve a human heart so keenly
as anger and grief. That day, both of them dug their sharp claws
deep into every fiber, every nerve, ending Ingrid Larson had left inside her.
They strained every muscle, tested every sense. She stumbled over the dead
ground her husband insisted on calling a farm. She passed, the broken corpses
of animals, the fresh drifts of black dust. She thought about her other
children. She couldn't face losing another. She walked and walked until she left
the roads and fields behind. She waited until she didn't know where she was
anymore, and she walked further into the gathering dusk, into the growing night,
until she looked up and saw an impossible tree ahead of her, standing
like a totem in the gray, dead landscape. Beneath that tree, someone
was waiting for her. Jacop, We're sorry, mamma, We're never minstaclesy
pang. She couldn't see his face clearly, only his thin shadow in the
cold moonlight. Behind him, there was something larger, something darker and shaggier.
She could smell wet fur, but she refused to believe it was a
bear. Not here. Its eyes glowed like starlight, its fur as dark
as the black blizzard's, if not darker. My boy, you sound so
different. Her son and the bear padded closer, the bear alway, staying
behind him, large enough that she could see the dust staining its legs,
leaves and twigs caught in its fur. Something deep and ingrid stopped her rushing
to her boy. I told her to stand very still. If I'm different,
it's because I've been saved, saved by who. He doesn't like people
to say his name out loud. I would like to know who saved my
son from the dust stones. You can help him, mamma. You can
save them all me, you and me and my friends together. That's why
we came to wait for you here. I am your proof, roof of
what proof that we can save them from the dust, from the death,
from the hunger, from death itself. This is a dream, isn't it
a selfish, stupid dream. I need to wake up. I'm sorry,
mother, he doesn't mean it. He's just worked so hard to bring us
a salvation, salvation from death. My dreams are making your speak nonsense.
My child, you were never the fancy of one. Maybe my heart finally
broke the day and took my mind with it. Mother, Please and need
you to listen. We can build something special here, and others will come.
They'll be drawn by your stories of hope. But we made a crave
for you. Your father used some broken fence posts for the cross. It
merely killed him to plant it in the ground. But I'm not dead.
You see I'm safe. Then come home with me. That farm isn't my
home anymore, Mamma. I must stay in the shelter of the tree,
in the river, safe from the storm. What river? I don't see
any river. It is beneath the earth, waiting. When the others are
with me, we will dig with our hands, and his river will flow
with water as sweet as the saddest storm. But my little one, here's
a bear. He's so many things. You just need to bring the others
to us. Mother, Let them be safe with me. This isn't real,
This can't be happened, Mamma, look into my eyes. Ingrid Larson
could only watch as the pale little boy knelt before her. The sight of
his new eyes made her weep. They were the same as the bears,
and the light from those eyes seemed to wash the gray world away. The
next morning, Andrews found his wife on her knees, sobbing close to their
well, clutching something close to her heart. Where have you been? The
children were wereried, sick. I I saw a yaku. Oh, my
love, I know how it sounds, Andrews. He wanted me to save
his brothers and sisters. Maybe you were right. Maybe we should move on.
This place isn't good for any of us now. Only his wife wasn't
listening. She opened her hands and showed him her son's little homemade bandanna,
still wet from the day he'd stepped out into the storm. Did you find
that any other well? He gave it back to me. It took time
for the bear's spell to weave itself into her tired, disbelieving heart, but
it found purchase there. Eventually, once her despair grew too great to ignore,
Ingrid Larson began to believe she could save them all, and that belief
spread like poison, just as her son had predicted, others did come after.
She took her children to him, and a river forged a path through
the dirt. A wood grew around that miracle, and a town grew around
the wood this town. Each of the new arrivals to Anne. When Meadows
met with Ingrid, all of them herd tail of their impossible savior, and
they were also given a warning by her. There is one threat, and
one threat only to a little fledgling town, My friends, one threat we
all have a duty to watch out for. It is not the dust,
and it is not the government. My accop has told me that we all
must be aware of a small, determined, green eyed girl. Thank you
to you, our supporters for making the show and this mini series possible.
Today's episode featured Cynthia Loman as Cuckoo Stone, our tales narrator, It's Van
Martin's as Anders Larson, Erica Sanderson as Ingrid Larson, and Jacob Larson and
Karim Crantley as Ursa. The air sound design was created by Davis Walden,
our sound designer and the creator of The Verdian Wild podcast. The Verdian Wild
is a fantasy adventure audio drama podcast following mytho zoologist Sebastian Verwood as he travels
the world studying magical creatures. You can find the show at the Verdian Wild
dot com that's v I R I d I A N or you can subscribe
to it wherever you get your podcasts. Today's custom score and theme song for
our show was created by our resident composer, Nico Vites of We Talk of
Dreams. Find Nico at We Talk of Dreams or streaming on Twitch. Also,
Nico has created his own audio drama podcast, a limited run with five
episodes. Nico was kind enough to ask me to write a story for the
podcast, so you can find my story Finding Hope as episode four. You
can go to We Talk of Dreams dot com forward Slash connections to find the
episodes and listen to the podcast. You can also, of course find it
any where where you get your podcasts. Artwork is created by Janet Andromeda illustrator,
artist, YouTuber and all around amazing human. Find her being creative at
Jenetcreations dot com. Our author is, of course, Christopher Long. You
can find him at Cjlongwords dot com. Chris has been featured on Victoria's Lift,
Shadows at the Door, and The Wicked Library multiple times. More of
his work is available on Amazon. Story editor and producer is Daniel Foytek of
Ninth Story Studios. That's Me. Our co producer is Meg Williams. Until
next time, keep your music box wound and follow Victoria on Twitter at lift
Guide or The main page is at Victoria's Lift