One Familiar Eve

ONE FAMILIAR EVE

by Clara Ward

(Content warning: climate change)

Maryann bathes in the light of the crescent moon at night.

In the morning, she rests her palm flat on my hood and announces, “We’re collecting wild rye for the burn zone.”

As a familiar who is fluent in both moonpower and sunspeak, I know the moon intends our quest to bring back more than leaves and roots. Although the newly burned areas downslope from old Hearst Castle could clearly use some witchy intervention, the moon understands multitasking.

Maryann is more inclined to trust than to question.

She smooths her poppy orange homespun skirt over my driver’s seat and ignores the belt I extrude with a ping. “There, there.” Maryann pats my vestigial steering wheel. “Don’t fuss so, my dear Eve. Just a quick jaunt down to San Simeon Lagoon.”

I ping more brightly until she clicks the seatbelt over her skirt. The panels shading my parking home haven’t had time to transfer much solar charge yet, but Maryann hasn’t worried about that since 2035. The familiar of a lunar witch can get by on moonpower. Regenerative braking helps, too.

Without so much as touching a button, Maryann relaxes in my bucket seat and says, “My dear familiar, guide me to the best selection of wild rye.”

Voice prompts were never meant to work that way, but Maryann forgets that along with an electric vehicle’s need for electricity. When the world changed, most smart cars had been too skeptical to hybridize with the witches’ growing magic. But with a navigation system as primitive as mine, I surged at the transformation on offer. 

Now I drive myself and my witch down the latest incarnation of Highway One. Half a mile inland from the original roadbed, but always right on the coast, this route resurrects itself after each cliff collapse and storm surge. California dreamers believe it back into existence every time.

My exceptional safety systems let me easily detect and dodge an unexpected pedestrian before pulling over. The hitchhiker—in denim cutoffs and a black tank top, I notice—doesn’t look old enough to know about machines like me. I prefer not to guess at humans’ ages, but this one can’t be over thirty. No new electric vehicles, or manufactured goods of any kind, had been made in those three decades. I wonder if this new person will see me as a threat, a curiosity, or more.

Maryann wakes with a start from what she’d never call a nap to say through my open windows, “What? Who? You’re not a plant!”

The spiky-haired youth peers in through my passenger window and slowly says, “Most people ask Fern zir name before making plant jokes. You looking for me?”

“I’m looking for wild rye. The moon sent me looking for native vegetation to stabilize a burned hillside before the winter rains.”

Fern clicks zir tongue. “Then you’re looking for me. I’ve been tinkering the machines near a native plant bank over there. Got a friend who could collect and haul either the blue kind or the creeping wild rye.”

Maryann smiles, perhaps appreciating in the moment how Fern must be part of our quest. “Why don’t we try a bit of each, if your friend doesn’t mind? Hop in and tell my dear Eve where we’re going?”

“Eve?”

“Pleased to meet you,” I say in my preferred alto voice.

Fern jumps and bumps zir head where ze’s been leaning through my window. “Never heard a car talk like that before, not even the most advanced EVs. You know, those super-sensing, auto-adapting ones, the ones that can drive themselves?” 

While I bask, quietly pleased to have impressed Fern already, Maryann hurries to defend my status.

“Well, of course. Eve’s not an EV. Eve’s my familiar.”

“Technically, I am also an EV.”

With a shudder that rattles her vowels, Maryann declares, “Noooo, perish the thought.”

“Hey, now you’re insulting my friend.” Fern stomps zir foot hard enough for my vibration sensors to detect.

“No insult intended, but witches are naturally biased toward magic and moonpower. Your friend who would help haul wild rye is an EV?” I ask.

At Fern’s nod, Maryann interrupts, “Are you sure you’re not a witch?”

“Nope, I’m a mechanic.”

“I am both a familiar and an EV,” I repeat. When Fern looks skeptically at my blank dashboard screens, I display my latest artistic creation, an animation of frogs sliding down moonbeams that shine in a symphony of calming colours. “I would like to meet your friend, Fern.”

Fern wipes zir hands on zir shorts and then dusts zir backside before gingerly opening my passenger door. “You don’t mind me riding along to give directions?”

“We’re both delighted to share your company.” Maryann rolls her wrist to wave Fern in with a flourish.

Fern needs no prompting to wear a seatbelt. 

My interior sensors soon thrill at zir careful exploration of all my knobs and touchscreens. In moonbeam frog mode, ze can do nothing to interfere with our course. While driving, I re-evaluate our interactions so far, and speculate—silently and inconclusively—as to the moon's full intentions for this quest. After a couple of miles, ze glances up suddenly and blurts, “Turn right at the monkeyflower!”

“Oh, how I love that orange bush!” Maryann claps. 

I gracefully slow to follow a compacted dirt road past well-tended patches of native flora. A punched metal sign above a barely functional garage declares, “Coastal Restoration - Native Plant Nursery.” 

The parking spaces beside the garage hold the skeletons of a semi-autonomous truck and an even older solar hybrid trike. I park silently in front. Before I can experience more than four seconds of sapient-automotive angst, I detect movement in my blind spot.

A yellow all-terrain forklift shifts within the garage to angle a protruding forward camera directly at me.

Fern practically leaps from my passenger seat, leaving my door agape. “Spork!” ze calls out. “Drive to me.”

Spork rolls forward, obeying Fern’s command, but stops at the precise angle to keep that same forward camera locked on me. It has a high-range zoom lens, possibly scavenged from a military transport. I don’t know much about construction equipment, but the bumper radar system and four corner cams match the original boxy yellow design. High-resolution lidar and more sophisticated cameras are affixed to the upper corners, as well as a sleek black AI-box on the cab floor that is clearly a new addition. 

“Greetings, Spork. I am Eve, and this is Maryann. We both use she.”

“Spork can’t talk, but we’ve been using ze for zir, same as me.” Fern pats the mast at Spork’s front with the same easy familiarity as Maryann pats me each morning. 

When Fern and Maryann leave to collect plants using human-pulled wagons, I open my Wi-Fi to greet Spork through means more appropriate for a vintage EV.

A burst of static burns through my sensors. I flee screaming into the deep black depths of reboot.

I emerge disoriented. 

My clock assures me only 3.2 minutes have elapsed, but I no longer trust my own systems. Climate control menus I long ago subverted in my desire to comfort and protect Maryann now flash before my processors, vivid and repetitive as I imagine human fever dreams must be. Remembering Maryann leads me to reassert my own autonomy. I secure my Wi-Fi and would lock my exterior up tight, except my passenger door still hangs wide open. 

Controlling what I can, I fill all my infotainment screens with frogs. They flip sideways, bouncing between pixelated moonbeams as I recalibrate and fight to restore my sapience with all the moonpower I possess.

“Enough!” Maryann calls, abandoning a wagon as she senses my distress and rushes to stand between Spork and me.

As Maryann lays hands on my driver’s side mirror and roof, her magic reinforces mine. My processors reorient toward Maryann as I perceive her awareness focusing in on me. I begin a methodical software scan, a meditation meant to cleanse and restore my inner self.

“We have a budding witch in our midst.” Maryann silences Fern with a raised palm as she says, “No, not you, dear. I should have realized the mechanic would be the familiar in a place like this.”

Spork rolls backward. Ze conducts so little moonpower that I’d missed it behind the electromagnetic field of zir lithium-metal-polymer battery. Now I understand the power spike as the byproduct of a young mind first realizing: zir sapience comes from magic.

“What?” Fern asks. Clearly ze missed it, too.

Maryann nods my way, allowing me to speak my truth. 

“Apologies. I would never have initiated Wi-Fi contact without consent, had I realized. I did not mean to intrude on another witch and zir familiar.”

Spork lowers zir forklift to the ground, a clear apology in vehicular body language. 

My terror at the forced reboot twists further into regret. This youngster lashed out instinctively, in self-defense. My intrusive communication attempt could have threatened zir entire existence. Such contact had been horribly misused in times past to overwhelm and shut down emergent intelligences, but it cannot permanently destroy those of us with magical backup. I will share that algorithmic ritual with Spork and zir familiar as soon as possible.

The newfound witch does not turn away or shun me. My sensors spark with joy as Spork reaches out cautiously, offering a small pulse of moonpower. I respond at the same power level, not wanting to overstep again.

Without a word, Fern clambers up into Spork’s single seat and wraps the seatbelt securely around zirself. “Is that what we are? I wondered how I’d performed so many successful upgrades for you.” Ze chuckles. “I barely understood some of it myself. We both must have known on some level.” Fern strokes Spork’s steering wheel, which is probably as superfluous as my own. “In all the work we did together, you were guiding me to adapt to what you needed. This explains so much.”

“A familiar must be willing,” Maryann speaks into the quiet that follows.

“Of course, Spork’s such a good friend. I never wanted to be a witch myself, but I’m happy to assist one. Besides, we have an entire coastline to support together.” Fern wraps zir arms to practically envelop Spork’s steering wheel. 

I recall how right it felt to have both my seats filled earlier and wonder what else has brought us here today.

With my internal diagnostics fully recovered and my frog graphics sliding smoothly down my favoured artistic metaphor for moonpower, I realize the true meaning of our quest. “Should we form an alliance of two witches and two familiars? Four friends to help each other and our local ecosystem?” Clouds part, revealing a gibbous moon in a deep blue sky. 

“That’s perfect!” Fern bounces, as Spork raises and lowers zir forklift in time with Maryann’s pleased nod.

Then Spork prods me gently with a pulse of moonpower before offering a single file via Wi-Fi. I consent, proffering a decryption code created specifically for my new witch friend. I display the file contents across all my dashboard screens and chime once to draw the humans’ attention. 

What unfolds is a map of our ever-changing coastline, with updates logged by Spork as recently as this morning. Symbols indicate recent planting. A green-yellow-red colour code suggests areas in greatest need.

“This is where we meant to plant the wild rye.” Maryann points to a red zone near the old Hearst Castle Road.

Fern squints at the screen, then glances back to zir witch to confirm. “Spork agrees. Let’s do this!”

I pop open my trunk and frunk, eager to help carry all the plants and seeds recommended on Spork’s shared map.

Harmonizing our efforts, the four of us secure the botanical supplies for our first shared quest. The waxing moon rises higher, prepared to light the way as our first day together passes into a magical night.

CLARA WARD lives in Silicon Valley on the border between reality and speculative fiction. Their latest novel, Be the Sea, features a near-future ocean voyage, chosen family, and sea creature perspectives, while delving into our ocean, our selves, and how all futures intertwine. Their short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Decoded Pride, Small Wonders, and The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters. When not using words to teach or tell stories, Clara uses wood, fiber, and glass to make practical or completely impractical objects. More of their words along with crafted creations can be found at clarawardauthor.wordpress.com.

One Familiar Eve was edited by Toria Liao. It can be found in Tales & Feathers Volume 3.