by A. Sparrow
“What I do isn’t magic.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s … weaving.”
Ellen said nothing. She just walked beside me in the dark.
We came to a place where the rails split and switched into multiple sets of track.
“Should be a station here, I think,” I said. “Looks like a decent-sized town up ahead.”
A road converged with the tracks and followed parallel. Street lights appeared and became more numerous. We came to a concrete platform flanking one set of tracks.
My chest tightened as my train station anxiety kicked in. My little leaf sparrow, Billy, took to the air and flitted about, reflected my nerves.
“Not much of a station,” said Ellen. “There’s nobody here. The platform’s empty.”
“It’s not even a stop,” I said, relaxing. “It’s a maintenance platform, for the guys who work on trains.”
***
We continued into town, where we found a real station, on the Atlantic City Line of New Jersey Transit. I couldn’t bring myself to go in. I peeled a hundred of the roll and gave it to Ellen to buy us tickets, and went around the corner to a little pocket park where a couple of winos were sharing a bottle of something in a paper sack.
The place was called Hammonton. Never heard of it, but then again why should I? I had never heard of Naugatuck, either, but that was now my destination, only because it made sense to get the heck out of Jersey. Sergei had proven that there was no limit to the lengths he would go to teach me a lesson. The latest incident probably only deepened his obsession.
I found myself a bench as far as possible from those two guys. It was a nice enough little park, well-lighted with a playground in the corner. Hedges and rose bushes. Angled walks. Benches and ledges.
If it wasn’t so close to Sergei’s base of operations, I could imagine myself summoning the roots right here. I certainly felt hopeless enough. A wave was building. It would be nice to see Bern again, just to have a break from all this madness. Even being with Luther would seem sane after what we had gone through with Sergei.
Maybe I should have let Sergei’s flunkies shoot me and be done with it. But it was getting pretty obvious that I wasn’t ready to abandon my connection with this world, and my ability to choose. That realization alone should have been enough to keep me out of the Liminality forever.
But I was beyond that, having crossed a threshold reserved for more ordinary folks. I was learning that there were no hard and fast rules in this universe. Exceptions and workarounds existed for everything, including life and death.
“James?” It was Ellen calling out from behind a hedge.
“I’m over here,” I said.
She came bustling up in a fluster. “There’s a train coming at 8:45. We’ve got ten minutes.”
“To where?”
“Philly,” she said. “Thirtieth Street Station.”
She grabbed my arm and hauled me off the bench. The winos were staring at us. One of them reached into his jacket and pulled out an iPhone. Maybe I was being paranoid again, but I couldn’t help thinking this guy was another link in Sergei’s network.
We hurried out of the park and down the sidewalk.
***
Turned out there was no real station in Hammonton, just a rain shelter and some vending machines.
We stood there alone. Ellen took my hand at one point. I didn’t even notice at first. I didn’t care. Whatever. As long as she didn’t get any other ideas about us.
The train announced its imminent arrival with a flash of light and a bleat of its horn.
Ellen was looking at me funny.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“What do we do about … Billy?”
The dang creature was still on my shoulder, like a pirate captain’s parrot. I brushed him off and he took wing, looping around me before alighting on my other shoulder.
“Scram! You can’t come along.”
I grabbed him and flung him into the bushes and he disappeared into the darkness. He got the message this time. He didn’t come back.
***
Our train was full of old people from some senior center in Pennsylvania, returning from an outing in Atlantic City. Man, were they sloshed and rowdy.
We drew lots of stares. For good reason. Our faces were bloody and smeared with mud. Our clothes were sodden, ripped and stained. We were aromatic with sweat and swamp.
“So this is the plan,” said Ellen. “We switch train in Philly. Take the Amtrak up to Connecticut. We can stay with Grams as long as we need, until we figure things out.”
“Figure out? What’s to figure out?”
“How … to be safe from them,” she said. “A place where they can’t ever find us.”
There she went again, talking about us as if we were an item. I barely knew this girl. Sure, traumatic experiences spawned intimacy, but I still had Karla on the brain, 24/7.
But I went with the flow. There would be plenty of opportunity to slip away later.
My mind began to drift. I sensed that wave of hopelessness again, that things were only going to get worse from here on out. That was a good thing, but I didn’t let myself believe it, not in the front of my mind, anyhow.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m gonna try and tune out for a bit. Okay? I’ve got places to go, people to see.”
“Okay,” she said. “But it’s not that long a ride to Philly. A little over and hour, maybe.”
“That’s all I need. You see, time gets compressed in funny ways when my spirit travels.”
“Okay, but … once we get there, how do I get you back?”
“Just hit me.”
“Hit you?”
“Yeah. And don’t be afraid to get rough … and loud. That should do the trick.”
She sighed long and deep. “Um. Okay.”
***
The train passed through yet another broad stretch of pine barrens. I kept my mind unfocussed, baiting the Liminality to come get me, but snatches of vision and sense kept intruding into my thoughts. I had this feeling that part of me was zooming along a hundred feet above the train. As if I needed more weirdness in my life.
It had to be Billy—that little piece of my will—sharing snatches of his senses with me. How a headless bird-thing even had any senses was beyond me.
Between him and all these loud, old people it wasn’t happening. I was too distracted.
But somehow I did manage a quick nap. Not quite the spiritual transport I had in mind, but my body appreciated the rest. Ellen apparently assumed that my spirit had wandered off to some distant universe from the way she slugged me when he got to town. That girl could sure pack a punch.
I stumbled out of the train rubbing my shoulder in a daze of grogginess. So this was 30th Street Station. Just of the look of the place resurrected all the phobias I had acquired in Europe. I had no tangible reason to be afraid. Sergei had no reason to expect us here. And I had no fear of death or dying. Who said anxieties had to be rational?
I gave Ellen a couple more bills and she bought us a pair of tickets on the Amtrak. People here seemed a lot less annoyed by our filth than those old folks. Maybe they were more used to homeless people or something.
It was getting late. Some of the shops and food stands were beginning to sweep their floors and stack their chairs in preparation for closing.
“Can I ... uh … have a couple more of those hundreds, if you don’t mind?”
“Why should I mind?” I said. “It’s not my money.” I reached in the courier bag and peeled a couple more bills off the stack.
Ellen looked me over. “What size shirt do you wear?”
“I don’t know … uh … medium?”
“I’m gonna see if I can get us some fresh clothes. I’m tired of smelling like a freaking cess pool.”
“Get some food while you’re at it. What time our train leave?”
“We’ve still got another hour,” she said, as she brushed bits o
f swamp from her hair with a comb she had found.
I sprawled out on a broad wooden bench and closed my eyes. I wondered what had happened to Billy. Maybe the force that had animated him had finally dissipated.
Then and there, I found myself homing in on the wavelength that had eluded me earlier. The roots were beckoning. My breathing grew slow and deep.
“Oh!” she said. “Is this how you do it? Are you going away? Is this how you go … to that place you go?”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing out the vowel on one long exhalation.
Chapter 11: Alliance
Heavy rain splattered my face. I lay on my back at the edge of the sinkhole, lukewarm water sloshing against my side. I finally get dry in one world, only to be back in the slop of another.
I got up and shook myself off. The building Luther had grown from the seed of Bern’s dismantled cabin was now a bulbous, multi-turreted monstrosity. It loomed over a wall-like arc of one-story cottages tucked cheek to jowl against each other like so many lumps of monkey bread. Curls of smoke corkscrewed into the sky from many narrow chimneys.
This new Luthersburg seemed perilously exposed and undefended. It had no walls or palisades.
Residents lounged under awnings and porches as if they were on beachfront property. I suppose it would seem that way to those who had only known the Liminality from those caverns down below, where the only light came from luminescent roots.
A pair of riderless mantids prowled a scrubby hollow where flood waters pooled and spiraled into a pit in a mini-maelstrom.
A guard sat watching me—a youngish, Asian fellow sitting under a black umbrella that looked like it had been stitched together from the wings of giant fruit bats. I recognized him, but I couldn’t remember his name.
“Hey! You’re Karla’s friend. Remember me? You guys rescued me from that Reaper?”
He said nothing. He just sat there, looking nervous and confused, holding an ornate black powder musket in his lap.
I shook his limp hand. Slowly, some recognition seeped into his expression. “How is Karla?” he said. “Do you see her?”
That was already more English than I remembered him being able to speak.
“She’s dead,” I said. It seemed a blunt and insensitive thing to say, but the word somehow lacked the potency and finality that it used to hold with me. It felt the same as telling him she had gone off to college.
“Is Luther around?”
“He is meeting with the gray people.”
“The Dusters? You mean Yaqob’s here?”
The kid just shrugged. I nodded to him, and walked off across a muddy space where a gang of workers was fitting heaps of river stones into carefully raked beds of sand, adjusting their positions with whacks of a wooden mallet. It surprised me to see them do it the old-fashioned way—no weaving. Maybe Luther wanted this place to last longer than the first ‘Burg.
A garden took shape near the entrance, with real plants—local varieties that someone had selected and transplanted—the beginnings of an arboretum. The mansion and its outgrowths had now totally engulfed Bern’s cabin. I thought I recognized part of Bern’s wall embedded in the patchwork.
I came upon a group of soldiers milling and chatting beneath a tiled portico. They wore swirly armor that looked almost elfin, designed more for ceremony than battle protection. I walked right past them, heading towards a propped-open door.
“Oh, no. You can’t go in there!”
“The hell I can’t.”
One guy started after me, but his buddy whispered something to him and he let me go.
I entered a lobby that could have been at home in some corporate office building, without the receptionist booth. There were some slapdash sofas strewn about, crudely woven, not Luther’s style at all. They were likely temporary placeholders. It would take some time to get the place properly furnished.
I heard some voices so I went straight through into an airy, circular chamber with a transparent dome. This was to be another, interior garden. Walkways were interspersed with flower beds not yet populated with plants. At the center, stone benches rose in tiers like a mini Roman amphitheater.
Here they were, Luther in the center seated cross-legged on a thick carpet. Urszula and Yaqob sat together on the first bench, while a smattering of Dusters and Weavers occupied the upper tiers. Bern was here, too, wearing a suit and a bow tie. He stood part, poking around the dirt with his walking stick. He beamed when he saw me.
“James!”
Luther only blanched and rolled his eyes. He clapped his hands.
“Karina! Please bring the wonder boy a robe or something. My goodness.”
The intensity of Urszula’s probing gaze unnerved me. Yaqob, on the contrary, barely glanced in my direction.
A lithe young woman came bounding out of one of the adjoining rooms carrying a neatly folded bundle of terry cloth, presenting it to me with a little curtsy. I accepted and shook it open. It was Navy blue, with big, floppy sleeves and a tie around the waist.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” I said.
“Oh, no. Not at all. We were just finishing up,” said Luther. “So how goes it in the land of the living? It has been ages since I have gone back. Any new terrorist attacks? Financial disasters?”
“I figured out how to Weave,” I said, pulling on the robe, and drawing it tight.
“Well, congratulations. They do call us Weavers for a reason.”
“No. I mean, over there. On the other side. I got it to work.”
“On Earth? Life? I don’t think that’s possible. Is it?”
Bern stepped forward onto Luther’s carpet.
“Actually, I’ve always expected as much. Why should any single plane of existence be more real than the next?”
“Watch your shoes, please,” said Luther, glaring at Bern’s muddy footwear.
“Sorry.” Bern stepped back.
“Any you did, I doubt it could have been very significant. There are severe constraints in that world, I am sure, as compared to here. There is a reason why there is so little magic on Earth.”
“Actually, I … uh … I made a … a monster, and—“
Luther rolled his eyes and waved me off. “Please. You can tell us all about it, later.”
“I need to go,” said Yaqob.
“Of course,” said Luther. “But first, let us celebrate our treaty with a toast. Karina! Bring the wine, please.”
I looked to Bern. “There’s a treaty?”
Before Bern could even execute a nod, Luther answered for him.
“It’s all gone smashingly well. We and our allies have identified substantial mutual interests. Simply put. We all hate the Frelsians. And with that common denominator, a beautiful alliance is formed.”
“So … you’re joining the war?” I said.
“War? What war?” said Luther. “There is no war. Only detente.”
“The Frelsians stay on their mountain,” said Urszula. “They don’t dare visit the plains anymore. Not even at night.”
“They send only their beasts now,” said Yaqob. “Only a few. Enough to harass us. Inferior creatures. Unfit even as prey for our insects.”
“Pardon me for saying this, but this place seems kind of vulnerable. No walls. No guards, really. You make, kind of a tempting target for them.”
“Let them come,” said Luther. “We are better defended than you think.”
The girl who had brought me the bathrobe came around with a tray of stemmed glasses filled with a clear fluid.
“Everyone, take a glass,” said Luther. “To our budding alliance.”
I sniffed at the liquid. It looked like water, but smelled like wine.
Yaqob grunted and drank his down before Luther had a chance to raise his own glass. Like a true diplomat, he shrugged and went ahead with the toast.
“To all who persevered in the dens of Reapers to rise above. To our friends who have cheated fate to seek a better world. To us! To our alliance!” H
e rose his glass high and quaffed it.
I took a little sip, just to be a team player. The stuff tasted awful, worse than that cheap ass Mad Dog stuff that all the winos in Ft. Pierce used to drink.
“Ah! Not the best,” said Luther. “We’ll put out a call for someone who can Weave us a decent wine. Still, it is reminiscent of the real stuff. No?”
“Our fermented nectar is much better,” said Urszula.
“Excuse me?”
“Our aphid dew. Fermented. It is superior, like a fine mead. I will bring you some.”
“I … I would enjoy that,” said Luther. “So, dear people, the vision I have is to use this station as a center for recruiting renegade souls. No longer, will they all go to Frelsi. We shall compete, and by virtue of out location … and our virtues, I am sure souls will decide they would rather be with us. We shall offer them an option to the totalitarian misery lorded over by those so-called Freesouls.”
“Where’s Frelsi gonna get their Hemis?” I said. “They’re not gonna like that up there. They depend on a steady supply of new souls.”
“Not my problem,” said Luther. “Frelsi will get their share. The name alone has cachet down beneath, thanks to the freaks they send to recruit. But we, at least, offer the chance of a freer, more democratic existence.”
Bern and I looked at each other. He sure didn’t sound like the dictator we knew below ground.
“What makes you think they’re just going to sit around and let you?” I said. “They’re gonna try to take you down. They have an army, you know.”
“As do we,” said Luther. “Harvald and Astrid are leading patrols up into the hills as we speak. Our friends, over here, are supporting us by air.”
“I keep telling him,” said Bern. “It’s a big army, they have. They weren’t really tested in the last fracas.”
“Numbers are less important than ingenuity and skill,” said Luther. “From what I hear, Wonder Boy here illustrated that famously in the raid that claimed my granddaughter.”
“And my brothers and sisters are much more interested in fighting, these days,” said Urszula. “Our success has inspired them.”
“If nothing else, these patrols serve as good bait for our ambushes,” said Yaqob.
“Don’t sell my people short,” said Luther. “They have talents in the fighting arts. Ballistics. Incendiaries. An arsenal of spell craft diverse and deep.”
“We shall see,” said Yaqob, rising. He strode across the domed garden without a good bye.