Soleil

by Jacqueline Garlick

  “Like I said, I don’t know. We were just doing what you said: trying to recreate Eyelet’s father’s antidote just in case they have no luck finding the original, according to his notes in the journal here.” He points to the page still resting open on the lab table in front of Sadar

  Masheck steps up to examine it.

  I glance down at the page, and though I know nothing about potions, I ‘ave the strangest feelin’.

  “Sadar touched the page and all of a sudden he started to shake.”

  I back away from the book.

  “I’ve seen Sadar pull up visions before,” Martin says, “but never like this. He read this here bit”—he hovers a shaky finger over the line on the page— “and his eyes rolled back in his head the way they do, and he started speaking in tongues. But not his tongue—someone else’s.” He swallows.

  Sadar’s head turns slowly, his eyes demonic. “It. Was. Himmmmm,” he drones, the words bubbling out of him low and exaggerated, like a possessed beast.

  I look into crazed distant eyes. “It was ‘oo?”

  “Eyelet’s father.”

  I feel me eyes bug from me ‘ead. “Eyelet’s what?”

  “I am he.”

  Pan flaps her wings, and settles on the table next to Sadar.

  Masheck and I share a hollow look.

  Martin grabs his chest. “What have we done? What are we doing?”

  I raise a hand to quiet ‘im, afraid to break the spell that Sadar’s in.

  “No disrespect, but aren’t you dead?” I ask.

  Sadar shifts his distant eyes my way. A cold shiver shoots through me.

  “There was a flash. I saw it. And I ran.” Sadar stares past us at nothin’ in particular, as though recountin’ an event in a trance-like state. It’s clear by ‘is facial expressions, though, in ‘is mind ‘e seems to be re-livin’ it—every painful moment. “There was an explosion.” He winces. Eerily fiery flames play in his eyes. “I escaped it and I pulled him out with me. But in the end he didn’t make it.”

  “‘Oo? ‘Oo didn’t make it?” I prompt him, terrified to move too close.

  He cranks ‘is neck around, and fixes ‘is glarin’ eyes on me. “I brought him back to where he belonged and laid him on his front doorstep. There was a child. He saw me. His child. He had a damaged face and demon eyes, but otherwise it was he reincarnated. The child looked at his father and wailed, and I pressed a finger to my lips. The worst was yet to come. I knew it. I beckoned him to drag the body inside and lock the doors behind him, when a woman showed up, with a strange long face and saggy eyes, and they did as I said.

  Iris snuffs then bursts into tears. I know what she’s rememberin’. I’ve ‘eard the story many times.

  “Then I ran,” Sadar continues, unaffected, “as fast as my feet would carry me. But it wasn’t enough. I fell by the roadside, dragged down by the thinning air.” Sadar’s breath huffs and heaves as if he’s relivin’ the moment. He gasps and clutches his neck.

  “What’s happening?” Masheck shouts. “What is it?”

  “I can’t breathe,” Sadar responds in a strangled voice. “I can’t get up. Everything is burning. Burning all around me, the trees, the earth, the sky. The road, even the water is burning.” Sadar looks back to me, his gaze narrowin’ to tortured slats. “My skin is melting, and draining away!” He holds out his arms and stares at them. “The explosion burned me, but it’s this that strips the flesh from my bones.”

  “What? What does this?” I’m frantic, sickened, retching. I taste charred flesh in me own throat.

  “It’s coming,” Sadar rasps. “I see it. It’s coming, and I can’t get away!”

  “What is?”

  “The wind. The burning, glowing wind.”

  “The what?”

  “Radiating out from the centre of the Core, from the centre of the flash—a great, roaring, tidal wave!”

  “Of what?”

  “It devours the forest, turning the trees to ash. Buildings to rubble. Dirt to fire.” Panic fills Sadar’s eyes and he chokes. He claws at the lab table as if trying to get away. “I must save my family. I must get to them. They must know the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “I have not done this. It is not I.” Sadar’s face swings around, his eyes emptin’. A great flash goes off inside them. Then, as if we are watchin’ a picture flick show, the scene ‘e’s just described plays out in ‘is eyes before us. A white wind radiates out from the Core, its alabaster walls crumblin’. Trees topple, the force of the pulsin’ wave clear cuttin’ the forest, turnin’ all in its wake to dust. The storm sweeps toward his body, lyin’ on the road. I long to look away, but I can’t.

  The draw of the truth is too strong.

  The blazin’, white wind engulfs him, like a tsunami beating against a human shore, and he screams, the most harrowin’ scream. It stands the ’airs on me neck.

  I look away as the skin melts from his bones, my heart racin’ like a steamplough. When I look back, the great white wind has perished and it in its place a dark one lingers, coating the world in its deadly transparent drape.

  “The Vapours,” I say. “It’s in the Vapours.”

  “What?” Masheck turns to me, confused.

  Sadar’s eyes flicker blank, like the theatre screen when the picture-flick is finished. His chin droops to his chest, but not before one last image appears in his eyes.

  Eyelet’s father, lyin’ dead, his skin bubbled away. A word is etched in the dirt next to him. A man wearin’ red-soled shoes approaches and swipes the word away.

  “Radium,” I breathe. “The Vapours are made of radium!”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Eyelet

  I SLIDE DOWN THE trunk of an enormous metal tree and land with a crash on its roots. Urlick dumps out beside me and bounces to a jerky, pant-tearing stop. We sit for a moment side by side on the hard metal ground. Prongs of steel shavings sprout up like grass between us.

  “Well, that was certainly interesting.” Urlick rises up on one cheek and plucks a metal acorn from his arse. He scowls at me, like somehow it’s all my fault we’ve ended up here. He tosses the acorn away. It clinks off some metal bulrushes, then disappears into an oily stream with a plink. A mechanical bullfrog lets out an objecting croak.

  “What?” I say, raising an eyebrow. “You weren’t going to follow the rabbit?”

  Urlick looks cross. “We might have discussed the plan before jumping in.”

  “Because there was so much time for a formal vote?” I cross my arms.

  Urlick looks away. I gaze out over the horizon and gasp.

  All around us, rusted hunks of steel, corroded sheet metal, and a smattering of factory scraps—gears, rods, plates and springs—have all been fashioned together to resemble a landscape. It is an entire world constructed out of rubbish—discarded scrap materials cast down from the factories above. “So this is where all that junk was going.” I speak of the workers we saw unloading junk earlier, over the side of Embers. “Where all that dumping went.”

  Urlick squints to get a better look. “I’d say so.” He scowls, brows knitting tightly, staring off over the sheet metal hillside.

  Where everything was white before, in this land everything is black, the clouds, the sky, the river running beside us. “Is that oil?” I point, screwing up my face.

  “Looks to be,” Urlick answers. The stream burps and gurgles past, slicking the base of metal rocks on its journey.

  The trees, the flowers, even the blades of grass appear to be mechanical, as do the birds and the insects in the sky. Each glint gunmetal grey, under the flat rusted-sliver moon that hovers in the inky sky above. A gentle breeze picks up, causing everything to swish and sway—every steel-shaved blade of grass, every nut and bolt branch, every tin-stamped metal leaf. They clink and clatter in the trees, as if we are standing inside a giant wind chime. An ominous, unfriendly wind chime.

  I look out over a wide plain, into the sheet metal valley belo
w, all riveted in seams, the line of the horizon broken by a giant metallic city—its black silhouette staining the coal-smeared sky. All the buildings and roads are formed out of metal junk, just like the countryside, with factories that belch extra filth into the air. Layers of soot-coloured clouds form a tumultuous dome over our heads. I look up, noting they barely move.

  One finally shifts, cloaking the moon, making the already nightmarish landscape even more chilling. I shiver and hug myself, wondering who would create such a place as this? Better still, why.

  So this is the truth of Embers, is it? What lies beneath?

  Great black flakes of fly ash, the size of human hands, fall all around us, draping us in their poisonous snow. Pulverized feldspar grime gusts into our eyes, purging from the city’s countless smoke stacks.

  “This could give Brethren a go, couldn’t it?”

  Urlick dusts off his pants. “Blast. This gives the Follies a good name.”

  A frog, in the nearby oily stream croaks. It leaps, causing me to jump. It lands among the nuts and bolts and engine parts that stand discarded in the centre of the stream like rocks, caught on the oxidized silt sandbars created by factory run off.

  “I wonder what this place is, exactly?” Urlick mutters, looking about.

  “Well, I get the distinct impression it’s not Limpidious.” I rise to my feet, dusting off my tenderly bruised bottom.

  Urlick jerks to a stand, dashing me in a contemptuous look. “Of course, you wouldn’t know that because you’re not a believer.” I pinch my hips.

  “I guess we can safely say we’ve lost the rabbit,” he changes the subject.

  I toss him a sideways smirk. “He can’t have gone far. We can see the limits.”

  “Can we?” Urlick narrows his gaze and lifts his brows. “Or is it all just a mirage?”

  A strange wind picks up, whipping our hair about our heads and tossing our clothing back from our frames. I fight to keep my balance against its raging gusts, hair threading through my mouth, as I twist and turn away from it. “What is this? What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Urlick shouts over the roaring wind. “We’d better get out of here!”

  He takes my hand and starts forward, curling his head into the force, when something large and white appears on the horizon, tumbling its way toward us. It flies steadily toward us, slapping Urlick in the face, wrapping itself ‘round the both of us. Urlick extends both arms holding it out to get a better look. “It’s a page from a book.” He looks at me, confused.

  Not just any book—my book—the one father used to read me, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The missing pages. Torn from my book. Back on the nightstand in the previous world. I run a hand down its tattered edge, blood red, slashed-style writing etched across its middle. “GO BACK,” I read.

  The wind rips the page away from us, and I let out a small shriek. It’s quickly replaced with another. “TURN AROUND.” That page reads, before it’s swept away, and another comes crashing in, sticking one to each of us, just long enough for us to read their warnings, before they’re blown away.

  “RETREAT WHILE YOU STILL CAN.”

  “THINGS HERE ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.”

  “THE AIR.”

  “THE FLOWERS.”

  “THE EARTH.”

  “THE TREES.”

  “THIS IS NOT WONDERLAND.”

  “Well, I could have guessed that without the warning.” I cast the sheet aside, only to be struck by another that knocks me to the ground. I struggle to unfurl it from my body. My heart thumps in my throat. “LEAVE, OR ALICE DIES.” I scramble to my feet, frightened.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Urlick shouts.

  “You know, Wonderland?” I clarify. “Like in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?” Urlick frowns. “Don’t tell me you’ve never read the book.” He shakes his head. “It was my favourite when I was a child. My father used to read it to me every night before bed—”

  “Your father read you a book of nightmares before he put you to sleep.”

  “No silly, it was a wonderful book full of enchanting things. Nothing at all like anything here”—I study the world around us, struggling to catch my breath—”and yet strangely, almost completely parallel. Like a twisted homage of the original. But who would do such a thing?”

  “Does Alice die in the original story?”

  “No, of course not.” The page rips from my hands, and is quickly replaced by another. I push it back so I can read, “THE ULIMATE POWER HAS BEEN RELEASED. After that I’m hit by page after page, with just a number scrawled in the middle. “8. 8. 8. 8. 8. 8…”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t quite know,” I shout over their flapping.

  A wild laughter booms through the trees. All at once, the winds reverse and blow the other way, pushing us both up the cobblestone pathway toward the city, involuntarily. “The winds of change.” I shout to Urlick. “It’s too late.” We’re forced from a slight jog, into a full-fledged run.

  “What do we do now?” Urlick’s arms flail at his sides.

  “I don’t know!” I’m running so fast I can barely keep up to my own feet. The winds break out in a laugh. Suddenly, the winds completely cease and we’re cast into a heap on the steely road.

  Urlick looks up breathless and shaking. “What was that all about?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever it was, let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Maybe we’d better go back.”

  “We can’t go back or Eyelet dies, remember? You heard the alchemist.”

  “Yes, but,” Urlick looks sheepishly around. He moves in close and lowers his voice. “What if Eyelet and Alice are the same person? You read the warnings.”

  “Why ever would make you think that?”

  “Well, for one, we were just quite literally wrapped up in the pages of your favourite book. And secondly, does anything here make any sense?”

  “That’s preposterous. Completely preposterous…” Why did I say that? Why am I using that word? Crackling laughter fills the forest. “Who’s doing this? Who’s making this happen?” I swing around in a wide turn.

  Something rustles in the bushes next to me, and both Urlick and I jump. He dashes left and hauls me with him. We look to each other, concerned.

  I reach out and thread my fingers through his, struck by a sudden rush of nervousness. He’s right, this is all too surreal, all of a sudden. Too Alicey-Eyelet surreal.

  “Jumpy, aren’t we?” a stilted voice says, all staticky, as if produced through some sort of gramophonic device. I search the trees above our heads, but come up with nothing.

  “Down here,” the voice says. I lower my chin.

  From out of the bushes, a rusting, mechanical centipede appears, scurrying up a metal cobblestone path that wasn’t there a moment ago. I blink my eyes, unsure if the image is real, but it doesn’t disappear.

  “Fear not,” the creature shouts. “I come in peace.” I squeeze Urlick’s hand harder.

  The centipede scuttles toward us at an increasing speed, its body made of clinking metal plates, all strung tightly together with tiny bits of twisted copper wire, propelled by hundreds of clanking-flex metal conduit-tube-legs. Its claws are made of rusted, bent box nails. At least, that’s what I think.

  I gasp and stagger backward into Urlick’s arms, my heart aflutter, as the creature pulls to a stop at the base of Urlick’s feet. Urlick quickly tucks me in behind him, and takes a manly stance.

  “Great goodness, I said I come in peace. Are you hard of hearing, as well?”

  “As well?” I repeat, as if there is something else that we should know that we are.

  “I have an invitation for you.”

  “An invitation.” Urlick clenches his fists.

  “Yes. To a party.”

  “You’re not serious.” Urlick scowls.

  “Of course I’m serious.” The creature sounds offended. “I’m never anything but.” />
  This is all feeling strangely Wonderlandish. In a very anti-Wonderland way. As though we’re right in the middle of it. “This party,” I say. “What kind is it?”

  “Why, a tea party, of course.” The centipede arches its broken brows, as if I’m stupid not to have known.

  “Of course,” I say. “What else would it be?”

  “A grand one, thrown by the Queen,” he continues.

  “You have a Queen here?” Urlick chokes.

  I elbow him in the hip.

  “Of course we have a Queen,” the centipede sounds offended again. The hinged elbow-plate of his lower mandible wobbles. He arches his back, then coughs and hurls up an invitation, inside a great glob of slimy, spit. “It’s all right there in black and white.” He points to the shimmering pool of emerald, green goo. Immersed within it, a golden card, layered in centipede spit.

  “Oh, my,” I swallow, then reach out to pick it up. The goo latches onto my fingers. I snatch back my hand and shake it out, shocked. “Thank you very much, but I’m afraid we don’t have time for tea,” I say, still trying to de-goo my fingertips.

  Urlick elbows me, hard.

  “Oh, but you must.” The centipede gasps. “The Black Queen demands it.”

  “The Black Queen?” Urlick asks.

  “Yes. Of Spades.” The centipede folds back. “What the Black Queen wants, the Black Queen gets. You’d better learn that lesson fast.”

  “Why?” Urlick asks.

  “Trust me. You don’t want to know.” I shake my head, then turn back to the ‘pede. “So let me get this straight…” I say. “The Black Queen of Spades has asked us to tea? Two people she doesn’t even know?”

  “Au contraire, my darlings. You’re very well acquainted.” A small alarm clock sounds within his vest pocket. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…” he checks it. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait! What did you mean when you said acquainted?”

  “You’re not familiar with the word?”

  “Of course I am, it just—”

  The alarm sounds again. “I’ve said too much already. I’ve got to go.” The centipede turns and scuffles away. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be late.” He calls back over his shoulder. “The Queen doesn’t take kindly to tardiness.”