Stillness fills the hall while each one holds their breath, Maggie maybe more so than the rest, as the Effigy is carried high by her son, David, and his son, and his sons, as she has commanded. The room gasps, some look away. A bairn whimpers, and is pressed against a chest close-cloaked, shush-hushed.

Kilts sway and a bagpipe keens lament around the massive dim-lit hearth which Adam built. All around are white-berried garlands of mistletoe, grown in neither earth nor air, partner of the oak that must burn here, and cut by a golden sickle at Maggie's behest. The log looks just like her. No-one now recalls why this is always so.

"Death to Death!" the chieftain yells.

"Light the Dawn!" the ragged people roar, with tears and strained voices, desperate now.

Refuged here, the new-islanded clans survive in empty shells of factories abandoned by Multi-Nationals, from the Days of Nations, before the sea came in and split them all apart. Only Maggie now recalls the Old Ways of the Times of Plenty, as she calls them. She speaks of food banks, and touchless books, and magic ways of moving pictures, just like they have in Harry Potter. The children study Rowling well, to prepare them for the Times to Come. They will have more to eat than contaminated seaweed and toxic mussels, or rock-smashed two-tailed harbour seals. New times are a-coming.

The Effigy of She, the Crone, lands fractiously amid the readied flames, upon which girls in ivy crowns throw herbs and scented hay to crackle. Then children advance with mothers' guidance and throw their aromatic cones of pine and larch, of course de-seeded, in the general direction of the log.

Do you remember learning to throw? Getting the direction, speed and velocity right, and then remembering to actually let go? They have been practising for weeks, and their pixie magic breaks the dour spell. All the room breaks into grins and laughs and the mood is lifted. Flames take and the driftwood log roars. The chanting begins of the songs of waiting, a few at the front turn-taking, others round the hall just humming and harmonising as they sense it, setting out the tables and checking on the food. Not yet. Hands off! Not yet. But soon, soon. No, you can't help me, thank you very much. Go sing, and play, I'll call you.

All night until the dawn Maggie sits in the communs room, deep in meditation. Some say she retreats there too much. Others know this is the front line in their battle to survive. The wires went down, satellite systems and undersea cables were wrecked under the sabotage. They had been completely cut off, but Maggie, day after short dark day, sat still on the floor holding the Exiles in her heart, and she got through anyway.

While the log of the Crone burns in the grate, Maggie enters the heart of the spirals. The grace and power of the clan resides in their tattooed symbols of the endless path of She: the Crone, the Daughter, and the Child, seeking, moving evolving and reforming. Outside, the slender windmills softly stir, a good omen for the task tonight.

Out on the rig, a party has begun.

* * * * * * * *

Help will always come to those who ask...

Help will always come to those who ask...

An image of the rig forms in Maggie's mind, although she has never been there or seen it.

A worker softly treads an inner staircase to the outer edge, looking up to the inky sky. He shakes his head, and pushes back his plait, a small spiral partially protruding at his cuff. Something troubles the water.

Maggie breathes soft and steady and then gasps. A kitchen. The scent of meat. Suddenly, a fat man laughing too much at the assembly, red-faced. And Adam. There Adam sits, raising a glass as he is wont to do, but never quite drinking.

The pipes! She hears the pipes, and here he comes, the piper, followed by the head of a roast pig, a huge apple stuck into its mouth. Straight to the fat man's table.

"Ha!" he cries. And mumbling fumbling accepts the choicest greasy pieces from the cheeks, then standing up declares:

"It may be not quite time," glancing at Adam, "but now is the time to say, we gather here today..."

Maggie rubs her eyes and leans back to take stock of what she has seen, but no. He is calling her, calling her. Gathering her strength, she has to go back:

"There will be no new year like this again for, well, Adam, how long? Well, this phenomenal rarity, a double double number! " He broke into a bizarre chant: "Twenty-two, o-o! 2200!" but there was an embarrassed shuffling.

"Pressing on. A year of double doubles tells me it must be the most auspicious time for us to double our output and double our money!!!!"

Hesitant cheers. There was no more oil, and there never would be.

"They can't refuse us now!" He looked puzzled at his glass, which a waiter with a plait swiftly refilled.

"Now," he said, swaying, "they can't refuse! Everyone is desperate!They have to let us drill under the coral. We can, gentlemen, we can, save the world!"

Adam discreetly signalled and almost imperceptibly retreated, as the clock struck midnight and the room erupted. Softly he stepped into a side room, scrolled his eye-screen, and pressed send.

The programmed undulations showing Adam's version of the patterns of output recorded for this field imitated the depletion of the wider oil reserves across the world, in spite of the exceptional abundance of the pockets of oil they had uncovered here. Adam's work would culminate with this mad night's endeavour: ten thousand barrels content would continue their extraction, to show up only as a rhythmic blip of nothing at all, fulfilling the well-groomed expectation that Adam had factored in of decreasing returns.

A worker made his way to the junction. He bowed and changed places. His counterpart went outside and looked up to the stars. Hmm. Not yet, thought he, as the firmanents winked at him..

Louder and louder, then dimmer and dimmer came the noises from the boss' table. Adam reached the galley.

Help will always come to those who ask...

Without a word the cook with the sleek neat plaited hair handed him a bag of peelings, and a rarely ever seen now apple core, to place in the reuse unit. Adam turned at the door where he made a show of leaving the valuable contents, half smiling, the firm round forms of apple pips softly massaging his mouth.

Head spinning now Maggie clutched her centre, racked by gripping cramping invasions. She dragged her body up again and forced her concentration. With unseeing eyes she battled to see more.

An unlisted vessel sailed away, a dragon carved and placed for all to see upon the prow. Waving from the foredeck with a twirl of linking spirals creeping round his wrist and up his sleeve, a man of the clan grinned into her mind, and lasciviously licked his lips.

Maggie laughed. Horror shook itself down and crept away from her old and bony, burdened shoulders. She took her hawthorne stick and made her certain way across the stark courtyard and round the back to where the biodes hummed. The space was ready now, with soil soft and well tilled along the spiral path that Maggie walked upon. She followed it, to the heart of it, and sat herself down. Warm was the air that came through from the chimney, and warm was the ash she smelled upon that ground.

She grinned. They had done it. White-fingered dawn lit up the sky, touching her face, as promised. Children first, then mothers then all came streaming in to fill the biode, where Adam would plant the apple very soon.

********************************

#SciFriday contest 15 @ScienceFiction profile

Prompt : Contraband, oil stocks running out.

Soundtrack not possible to post at all at the moment, don't know why....

Original Track - White Apple Tree - Snowflakes.  (Touch Tim 1 You tube was not available to link in all countries , real pity, good track! )The Mystics dream, lore a Mckenzie currently, also great, thanks to Esther Lee D for pointing me in that direction :)). 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=GAYaNgNqSds