by J L Forrest
“How do you reckon?”
“Summary justice, the violent raids, the shit your Horned Lords do, reaching as far down as California now—”
“No such thing as California. Today there’s only the Faen and everything which isn’t yet the Faen.”
“You make my point for me,” I say. “You sound like Caesar or Genghis Khan or Hitler.”
Cailín eyes me. “Don’t ever make those comparisons again.”
“All right,” I say.
“If you survive here long enough, you’ll come to understand.”
“How do I do that?”
“Come to understand?”
“Survive.”
Cailín’s hand, still resting in mine, squeezes reassuringly. “What was your mission here?”
Is it treason, saying it? “First, to deliver the baby to you.”
“Why?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know.”
“What else?” she asks.
“To go to Wrangell Island, to discover what’s there.”
She laughs. “Lucky you! We’re on our way there now.”
“Is that coincidence? Dumb luck?”
“What do you think?” After a moment she asks, “Anything else you were supposed to accomplish, besides putting a bullet through my head? Through my wife’s head?”
“That wasn’t Mr. Avidità’s command, by the way.”
“What was his command?”
“He left your deaths up to my discretion.”
“You could’ve killed Bett, certainly. Why didn’t you?”
“Too many unanswered questions, I suppose, questions about you, about what’s happening down here. It’s why Mr. Avidità let you and Bettina leave San Francisco. You make him curious.”
“Do we make you curious?”
I nod.
She glances toward Bettina, her wife almost invisible in the failing light. “I’m grateful for your curiosity, Aur, and I’ll do everything I can to satisfy it. You’ll be the most knowledgeable ex-spy in all history.”
Ex-spy.
“Anything else which Thomas Avidità commanded of you?” she asks.
“To return to him, alive, and give him a full report, to share with him everything I learn here.”
She frowns, leans forward, and kisses my cheek. “There’s little you’re not going to learn, Aur, but I can tell you this—you’ll never share a detail of it with your King.”
At those words I pull away.
“Aur!” shouts Cailín. “No!”
In the dusk, with abominations in the sea and giants in the sky, with numbing temperatures and a changed landscape, with enemies all around me, I leap into the breath-stealing water. It closes over my head and ices my veins.
Yet I swim for the nearest moonlit shore.
XXVI. Visions, Part VI
Long after sunrise I find myself in a forest of spruce, ponderosa, cedar, and hemlock. Ferns and junipers blanket the forest floor, a palette of green above and green below, greens in a hundred tints and shades, greens shot through by the subtlest washes of violet. Throughout the understory, birds sing, more than I’ve ever before heard, even in Mr. Avidità’s gardens, even in the terraria. Daylight glitters through the leaves, delectably bright, warming me to my core.
A spicy-sweet aroma drifts on a caressing breeze. Mint, sage, and life flavor everything.
Utterly alone, I wander this forest until a deer herd crosses my path. They leap a crystalline cascade, a stream spilling into an emerald meadow. Along the stream’s banks grow raspberries, and I eat my fill.
A frightened rabbit bolts from the raspberry bushes, vanishing through the undergrowth, and I follow it.
At the meadow’s far side, the forest constricts and in it, amidst a thicket of hawthorn, grows a twisted oak. From this oak a bleached skull hangs from a hemp rope, the knot tied through the eye sockets, the ethmoid bone between them pierced. Ravens circle the tree’s crown.
I lift the skull and examine it. Jawless, it nonetheless grins at me.
Eight more skulls hang from this tree.
More oak trees grow behind it, a forest in a forest which seems impossibly old. From each tree hang nine more skulls, some fresh and white, others aged and mossy. In one tree the skulls still cling to spines. A rising breeze gently swings these floating ornaments, these airy dancers.
Ravens chatter. Speckles of summery light invade from above, but the shadows deepen and the woodland grows cooler. Ahead, past a hundred more oaks and nine hundred more skulls, another clearing awaits, announced in golden light.
Not knowing why, I hold my breath, choosing my steps carefully.
In the golden clearing stand stones of crisply worked white granite, each as tall as a man, arranged in a circle around a fire pit. Charcoal and half-burnt logs fill the pit, while a fresher woodpile is nearby. At the circle’s other side is the tallest oak I’ve ever seen, a hundred meters high at least, its boughs broad enough to shelter a soccer stadium. Two squirrels play tag in its bows and far above them perches an eagle.
The rabbit stands on a fat root, looks at me, then hops out of sight.
Seven corpses hang from this giant oak, stripped and bloodied, one without a right hand. Ribbons of blue, red, and purple flutter from the boughs. Sticks swing from the ribbons, tied into patterns I know I’ll remember but whose meanings I do not know.
A fire burns in the pit. Was it burning before?
A woman sits by the fire. Was she there before?
She cooks pancakes on a cast-iron pan. There’s batter and butter and maple syrup. On one rock warms a plate piled with flapjacks. On another hot stone steams an antiquated steel coffee pot.
I know these were not there before.
“Come sit with me, Aurelius.”
Finding a spot opposite her, I say, “Where am I?”
“You’re home.”
I shake my head. “Home is Station.”
She pours coffee into a mug and hands it to me. The coffee tastes strong, bitter, and sublime.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “The Stations are nothing but glorified mobile homes.”
She serves up three pancakes, hands me a plate, and gives me a fork. Thick and buttery, the maple syrup runs down my throat.
After refilling my coffee, the woman sips her own. Her long, curly hair hangs madly across her shoulders. Her wide hips and ample bosom fill a royal-purple dress.
Ewe’s horns curl from the sides of her head, spiraling around her ears. They’re majestic, patterned in white and black. Were those there before?
“Who are you?” I ask.
“Your mother,” she replies.
“I don’t have a mother.”
“You do now.”
I shove another forkful of syrup-laden pancake into my mouth, wash it down with a gulp of coffee. “Mr. Avidità told me he couldn’t give me a mother.”
“Because you were dropped from some rubbery, stand-in vagina? Nonsense.” She scrapes another pancake from the pan and adds it to the stack. “How’re the flapjacks?”
“Delicious.”
“Come closer, love, and let me take a better look at you.”
I move around the fire, sit beside her, and set my plate and coffee aside. She rests her hands on my shoulders, her touch rich and reassuring. She licks her lips, lips the color of her dress. Her eyes, a darker and depthless violet, take me in.
Planting a kiss on my forehead, she says, “You’re still young, Aurelius, and you’ve never really grown up. I know what you need.”
My mouth feels dry, won’t quite work, but I manage to form the words: “What do I need?”
“Tell me, Aurelius, what would make you happiest? What have you ever wished for—besides your mother—that you could never have?”
The image of my desire comes instantly to mind. An African savanna far distant from Africa, of everything and everyone I encountered there.
To my left, Imka sits down.
Was she there before?
“Hey, lion-keeper.”
We eat together, plenty of breakfast to be had. Imka talks incessantly and dazzlingly of her terrarium, and of the lions most of all. I love her every word.
“They ask about you sometimes,” she says.
“The lions?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Mother clears the plates and food. Inside the circle she stretches blankets.
Imka is beautiful, her hair dark and saintly, her earthy eyes bright and lively, her curves fitted perfectly to the contours of my memory. She kisses me and I return her kiss. We kiss again and our kisses lead one into another, kisses inviting our hands, inviting our tongues. We toss aside our clothes and mother adds them to the fire.
In a torrent of caresses I find myself under Imka and I fill her. She rides me, her dance selfish, taking her pleasure in every wave of her hips, yet her selfishness gives back to me a thousandfold.
Mother walks the circle. She talks to the birds and to the trees. Are her hooves cloven?
“Come, come,” she says, laughing, “find happiness, my children.”
We do.
I spill myself inside Imka, and she exacts one last small death for herself. Mother is a Goddess and she fills the circle, fills the clearing, fills the wood. Pure shadow, she fills the spaces between the light.
Darkness is not the absence of light.
She fills the spaces inside us.
“Do not be concerned,” she says to us. “Your suffering is temporary, children, but the Summer Country is forever.”
From her dress she draws thread and a curved needle. The needle is like a whaling hook; the thread, like a hangman’s rope. She forces these through my eyes, behind the bridge of my nose, skewering flesh and bone. The crunching echoes between my ears, and I am screaming, shrieking, lifted up where I swing, back and forth, side to side, my head ratcheted, the pain an absolute white flame. One more death upon the tree and, though blind, I know Imka hangs beside me.
“Shh, children,” says mother. “I’m with you. I am Nodens, and I’ll never abandon you.”
There are sublime magics in this pain. If I can concentrate hard enough, maybe I can remember them, but the pain—
—my screams continue.
Besides, I don’t believe in magic, do I?
“Why all the caterwauling?” Nodens says. “No need for it. You know this is only a dream—”
XXVII. Dawn in the Land of the Gods
2131.4.15.6:24 PST
56°27’05.6”N 132°22’17.4”W
Alt 3m
The Faen
Inside Passage
I wake screaming and painfully cold.
Hours ago, after swimming to land, I sheltered in the overgrown branches beneath several old pines. To stave off the hypothermia, I stripped off my soaked clothes and I’ve wrapped myself in the fleece coat which, most critically, sheds water. Before passing out I’d managed to cover myself in rotting foliage, glad for its insulation.
Now, awake again, I can at least draw a full breath. Though numbed, my fingers and toes and testicles and penis continue to report their existence, and I don’t believe I’ll be losing anything to frostbite. My muscles are no longer seizing.
Still I’m shivering, my teeth clicking. Also that goddamned dream remains with me.
Pancakes?
Flapjacks.
It’s not yet sunrise but the clouds have dissipated and the stars shine, allowing me to recalibrate the local time and my location. An aurora borealis glimmers across the northern horizon, obfuscated by trees, but it soon fades and leaves only weak moonlight behind it, low on the western horizon. I find myself waiting for sunrise, and I hope the clear skies mean a comfortable morning. Maybe I’ll be able to dry my clothes, clear my head, and formulate a plan.
From the south, mournful howls roll across the landscape.
I’ve heard wolves before. That wasn’t wolves. Something bigger.
Now’s the time to formulate my plan.
How to reach San Francisco?
Make my way inland, the long way through Prince George?
Or by sea?
Calculating distances, speed of travel, survival odds—ordinarily simple equations, now challenging. My teeth clatter more, the temperature holding a few degrees above freezing.
A fire would help, but it carries its own risks, doesn’t it? Light to be seen, drifting smoke.
I’m so cold.
Below an old ponderosa I scrounge for duff, manage to gather twigs dry enough to snap. It’s difficult to concentrate on anything other than the task at hand. I split a larger stick, tap the duff into it, dig a shallow hole into the loam, and rub a narrower length of wood against it. Friction is key, and to protect my fingers I wrap them in a length of my tunic. After twenty minutes, even through the fabric, the wood grows hot. My thumb will blister, but I keep working, catching a whiff of smoke.
A second time, howls coil through the forest. Closer.
Must work faster.
The smoke curls past my face, a flame sparks, and I shelter it with my hands, adding more duff. The spark grows to a palm-sized fire. To this I add several twigs; to the twigs, sticks; to the sticks, small branches. The flames crackle. Gently, carefully, reverently I lay a small log beside the flames, not on them, and lean two more across the first. The logs are moist and there’d been no way for me to split them. If I burn through my tinder before the larger pieces light, the fire will die.
I keep adding twigs. Water vapor joins the smoke, and the bark hisses and sweats and pops. More twigs. At last, flames lick one log, then another, and I nurse these until they blacken. With more confidence, I add a bigger log, too long for the pit I’ve dug, but one which I can feed into the flames.
Across the range, howls answer each other, one due south, the other southeast. Much closer.
The fire roars, its radiance luscious, while pins and needles prickle my warming extremities. I drape my soaked clothes and fleece coat across nearby branches, setting them near enough the flames to dry.
Dawn arrives in this Land of the Gods. The eastern trees gain definition, pines mostly, but a dozen deciduous species capture the early light. The Morning Star—the Goddess Venus—outshines everything else in the sky and I can almost imagine Aphrodite descending into this forest.
By my estimates, I’m on the northwest extension of Wrangell. East of here, the Inside Passage fractures into narrower channels, though I’d rather not swim island to island to the mainland. This means I’ll need a raft, something flat with a ballast and a basic oar.
Hell, something I could build in a day.
I am near the source of Bettina’s and Cailín’s old tracking devices, the very point which Mr. Avidità wanted me to investigate, but the Queens and their entourage are also on this island, somewhere, maybe with others. I know enough already to make my report, and all I want is to leave.
Howls again. Hard to pinpoint the direction.
These sound like some fucking large animals, and I feed more wood into the fire. It roars now, a strong blaze, pushing back the understory’s shadows while the sunlight brightens the treetops.
I stretch and turn to drive away the cold.
I’m a spaceman come to Earth, stripped of unearthly contraptions, squatting in the most primeval forest I can imagine. A few days’ stubble roughens my face.
Howls.
I should have come with stealthware, with fiber armor, with full-spectrum sensory augmentation, with explosives, with laz-guns, with personal drones, with AIs. Then again I shouldn’t have come at all. Any of my brothers would be better prepared for this.
Hell, right now I’d kill for a knife.
Instead I choose the strongest, straightest, sharpest fallen branch I can find. As the east burnishes into gold, I refine the spearpoint by grinding it against stone, then hold it into the fire to char and harden. It’s a poor spear, even by prehistoric standards, but I’m confident I could ram it t
hrough a flank of meat.
A blazing fire and a spear. I feel properly savage.
Fifteen meters from me, standing on a lichen-covered boulder as if she’d been there all night, a familiar girl watches me. Her purple dress covers her from her throat to her ankles and wrists. Leather boots protect her feet. Nothing industrially manufactured, the boots nonetheless appear expertly crafted. A fur cloak wraps her shoulders and drapes her to her thighs. Her height and frame suggest she’s seven, maybe eight. Her expression strikes me as serious. Her dark hair fans across the mantle of her cloak.
“Hi,” I say, “I noticed you on the boat.”
She can’t be alone. Adults must be nearby, but I hear no one.
“You’re the one named Aurelius,” she says.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes! Absurdly blue, the exact shade of her mother’s.
“Why’d you jump ship?” she asks.
“I need to go home.”
“You are home. Don’t you know?”
“What’s your name?”
“Eagna.”
“Nice name.” I gesture to my clothes, still sopping, and to myself, a grown man embarrassed by a girl. “I’m sorry, I’m not prepared for a royal visit, princess.”
She hops off the boulder and steps toward me. “My mothers aren’t here.”
Eagna doesn’t seem to mind that I look like a half-drowned mole rat. Neither does she care about the spear I carry.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“Half an hour walk,” she says, “preparing the rites to Eostre.”
It is Easter today.
“I admit, I hadn’t expected that.”
Finally, she smiles. “Won’t you come with me, Aurelius? Everyone’s worried about you. You must celebrate with us,” she says, not as a command but as if I might be crushingly disappointed if I don’t take her advice.
“I’ve got friends waiting for me. I must go.”
Eagna shakes her head. “What are you?”
“What do you mean?” I add more wood to the fire, encourage it back to a roar.
“What are you? You’re not human, well, not a normal human.”
“How do you know?”