by Andy Havens
His heart pounding, he spun around to flee from the edge, the gray, the fall, his fear… and saw:
the exact same vista spread out beneath him on the other side.
The great, deep, vast, angled drop was here, too. He was standing on a nine inch wide curb atop an infinitely tall wall that dropped – not quite straight – to hell on both sides.
Now the sucking was pulling him the other way. Whichever way he faced. Stronger now. He began to lean back again, and then spun – more carefully this time – and felt the tugging cease from one direction, giving him a brief moment to catch his balance before it started up again from the first side.
Then he realized that something inside him was being pulled out and down and away every time he turned. Something like… like the reverse of fear.
Calm? Peace? Strength? Hope?
He couldn’t name it. But he could feel it. That’s what the pulling was. Not trying to get him to jump or to fall, but simply tearing all the not-fear from him. It flowed out like a warm, delicious liquid. He couldn’t see it, but it felt thick and soft like maple syrup. It flowed out of him like every memory of every happy day. Every pleasant nap, birthday wish, favorite dessert, friendly smile, joyful dance. All draining out and down. Falling out of him into the depths to crash and tumble and…
The juice of my soul, he thought.
Falling didn’t seem so bad. What is there to live for when all of that is gone? He tried to lean forward into the gray light… a bit more… a bit more…
But the fear! It had replaced everything else, and so he spun again to face the other direction. Terrified of what lay below in the dark depths. What might be down there.
It could be worse! It could be so much worse! I’m sure it’s even worse than this! It could be… Anything!
His mind began to conjure images of hell and monsters, but it wasn’t necessary. He turned and turned again every few moments, leaning away from the sucking feeling that pulled all his joy and peace away. He didn’t need to imagine fangs or claws. The fear was its own animal, now. The fear was the monster.
As he realized this, he grew both more afraid and, then, almost relieved. He laughed as he turned, knowing this was a game with no end. Where fear gave birth to more fear until there was nothing left to do but spin and cry and scream. But he couldn’t scream. He was never able to scream in this horrible dream. He remembered that somehow and…
Thomas Brownfield Edgington woke up.
The wind…
He did not remember his dream, but he remembered it was bad and he gasped a bit as he gulped down a few quick breaths.
“You OK, buddy?” asked Ken, his roommate.
“What?”
“You OK? You were breathing hard and whimpering.”
Tom nodded. “I’m OK. Just a bad dream.”
Ken nodded, too. “We all get those.”
“Yeah. I think we do.”
Their room was plain but pleasant. Two single beds on either side of a dresser with a column of drawers for each of them. Two chairs on either side of a coffee table. A plain blue woven rug. A big window with light blue drapes and pale blue shears. A door to the small bathroom with two hooks; one for Tom’s robe, one for Ken’s. A ceiling fan with a light in the middle.
“What time is it, Tom?” Ken asked.
Tom looked at the shadows coming through the window and answered without thinking, “It’s 7:38 in the morning, Ken.”
Ken chuckled. He liked that Tom could do that. Tell the exact time from just the position of the sun. Or the moon. Or, sometimes, even in a dark room with no windows. It was a game he enjoyed.
“You’re good at observation,” Ken said.
Tom nodded. “And you’re good at sneaking Bomb Pops out of the kitchen.”
Ken chuckled. “That I am, buddy. That I am. Sneaking.”
Tom nodded again. “I remember. A long time ago. At the other Farm. You found that door in the ground.”
“The root cellar. Yeah. Beneath the spot where there’d been a barn, I think.”
“Root cellar? Storm cellar. Yeah. The grass had grown over it, but you found it.”
“And there were tools and things in there. It was fun to go down and just smell how musty it was and think about what a farmer would do with those tools.”
“Yes. That was fun.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes. They wouldn’t be able to go down to the cafeteria and get coffee and rolls until 8 o’clock. If they waited until 8:30, they could have hot breakfast.
“We could have both,” Tom said to himself.
Ken knew what he meant. They’d been roommates at the other Farm. Now that they were back together, it was like they’d never been apart.
Neither of them wondered why Ken hadn’t had another roommate during those years. Nor why the bed was waiting for Tom when he came back. It just seemed… right.
“I found a kind of secret place here, too,” Ken said.
“Another cellar?”
“No, this time it’s a sort of attic space above the main building.”
“Is it scary?”
Ken shook his head. “No. It’s like a triangle. I think it’s right beneath the roof. In the middle you can walk standing up, but to the sides the angle is too steep and you’d have to duck.”
I don’t want to fall, Tom thought for a moment, his heart beating harshly twice… three times… before he forgot what he was thinking and asked Ken, “Is it hard to get to?”
“No. But it’s squeaky. I like to wait until there are other noises. Then I go up and sit very still and listen to the Doctor and the Guard and the Matron and the Cook. They talk. I don’t know what they’re saying a lot, but you can hear them. They move from room to room. Sometimes Cook plays a radio softly and you can hear the music.”
There wasn’t any music for the guests at the Farm. Ever. Tom missed music.
“I’d like to go with you next time,” he said.
Ken nodded.
A minute later he asked, “What time is it, Tom?”
“Time for coffee,” Tom said. They put on their robes and went down to the cafeteria.
* * * * *
“So?” Vannia asked. “Where to?”
Kendra tapped a finger on her nose. “That’s been the question for me all along, hasn’t it? Where to go? Who to trust?”
Vannia shrugged and Kendra could almost see where her wings would have twitched had they been visible. She was beginning to be able to see/feel/know various Ways even when they weren’t directly manifest. She could feel, for example, the Narrow Road outside the mansion they’d just exited. It began as a long, private driveway, but if she concentrated, she could almost see the map of them overlaying the nearby countryside. She could feel the energy of all those people as they used their machines to move themselves elsewhere. She could feel the road absorbing those intentions, those needs and goals. The road wanted to be used. That was its Way, and she could walk along it at any time now.
Just like Vannia’s wings. They were there even when they weren’t apparent. Part of Parrot Girl’s will, part of her Ways. They weren’t a display of physics—they were a manifestation of intent.
Suddenly, she knew exactly where she wanted to go.
“I’m going home, Vannia,” she said, stepping onto the Narrow Road.
With greater acceleration than she’d ever dared before, she let the Road’s Way grip her. She understood it now. Didn’t fear the speed. It wasn’t even “speed” the way she’d experienced it in the Mundane world. It was simply a Way of getting from place to place. You eat salad with a fork, eat soup with a spoon, cut meat with a knife, ride the Narrow Road to travel.
As the world blurred past her, she remembered other Ways of travelling. Vannia’s random “pops” from place to place that simply brought you nearer (mostly) to where you were going until it made sense to walk or use the Roads. The dice that had allowed her to increase her own, natural speed through a gamble. Her Uncle Bran’s Way of makin
g a car itself into an escape. She’d heard of others at Bardonne’s, too. Cracks in the stone and water of the world itself that Earth could slip through. Blood rites to draw kin to a hearth-circle.
She liked the Narrow Roads, though. Maybe because they worked for all Reckoners and “felt” more like something from her Mundane childhood. Going fast is fun! she thought. She remembered riding roller-coasters and going down water slides. Galloping a horse on a field trip. She wasn’t supposed to, but the horse got stung by a bee and shot off. For a moment she’d been scared senseless… then thrilled.
She leaned forward into the Way and basically told the Road, Go ahead… Fast is fun!
Her speed went from something comprehensible to the human mind to… not.
City. City. Countryside. City. Small town, small town, small town. Port. Short hop over water. City. Big city. Plains. City. Woods. City. Town. No sense of roads or other travelers or vehicles. Only snapshots of the major junctions. No slowing on the smaller country lanes, which had happened the other times she’d walked the Narrows. The Road lifted her up and she felt its joy as it simply did what it was created to do, the same way birds fly, rocks fall and light shines.
Then… home.
Right to her front step. The building she hadn’t seen in weeks. Three stories. Narrow. Bricks. Flower boxes still attached to the front windows that were still a bit unkempt. Neither she or her mother were much good at gardening at home, despite Kendra’s summer job with Rain.
Rain…
Thinking of her former boss’ death sobered her. Will there be consequences? Anything like a trial? In Bardonne’s it felt like I could delay all that. Now…? Will Earth seek revenge?
Climbing the four steps to the front door, she knocked, waited, knocked again, then rang the bell. But she’d known after the first knock that her mom wasn’t home. The house felt empty.
She sat down on the front step and watched her neighborhood go by: kids she’d known for years, their parents, folks who worked nearby. Most of them Mundanes. A few, here and there, Reckoners. Most of them, of both types, seemed not to notice her. One little kid, distracted by something as he walked past holding his mom’s hand, looked up at her and smiled. She smiled back and waved. The kid waved, too, and then was gone, hustled off to wherever moms hustle toddlers to.
She had no key. Nothing in her pockets, actually. She’d left her backpack at Bardonne’s with her phone, wallet, windbreaker, laptop and other random crap. Her dirty clothes.
Heading around the side of the building, past the townhouse connected to hers, she hopped the shoulder-high fence into the connected back yards of the five families who shared the building. They had decided, years before Kendra and her mom moved in, that it was more “appealing” to have the back plots connected into one, large-ish yard. It was something like a small park, really. Each family had an identical picnic table with benches and there were rules about swings, gnomes, plants, etc. The building committee (mostly Mrs. Jenkins who lived on the far corner) liked rules and Kendra’s mom didn’t care at all. They ate out back on nice nights sometimes. Other than that they pretty much ignored the yard. Their tenant dues helped pay for maintenance, and that was that.
Kendra found the spare key beneath a fake rock behind the small shrub to the right of their back door. Her mom had actually placed five different fake rocks with different keys back there. Four of them would, if used, fail to unlock the front door and trigger an alarm system.
She’d been sold on the idea by a coworker. Kendra thought it was dumb. Also atypically creative and complex for her mom. The only things worth stealing in their house were a few nice pieces of furniture. Maybe her laptop, but that was usually in her backpack. The rest? Books, cheap mainstream CD’s and DVDs, an old TV. A boom-box. Maybe worth $500 total.
She realized she’d been woolgathering and noticed that the bush by the back door had some dead leaves. So she picked those off for a bit. Then went back around front just as Vannia skidded to a stop at the curb.
“What the hell?” the blonde girl asked, seemingly both pissed-off and incredulous at the same time.
“What ‘what the hell’ the hell?” Kendra asked back, unlocking the door and gesturing for Vannia to follow her.
“How did you do that?” the smaller girl demanded, looking around the ground-floor living space as she shut the door behind her.
“Do what?”
“What you did on the Road?”
“I, uh… rode it? Same as every other time. I’m just getting used to it, I guess.”
“How long have you been here? Waiting for me?”
“I don’t know. I sat and watched the people going by. Got the key. Picked some leaves off the bush. Maybe twenty minutes. Half an hour? I was wondering if you’d flown off again or stopped to get lunch or something.”
Vannia shook her head. “No. I came straight here. Tried to follow your path on the Road. Couldn’t do it. Kept getting distracted by how much further in front of me you were. Had to really concentrate to even make it here this quickly.”
“OK.”
Kendra left the key in the bowl by the front door. That was the ritual. So you’d remember to put it back when you went out.
“OK?” Vannia said in a mocking voice. “OK? OK? What the shit, Kendra?”
Kendra turned back to look at her friend, standing in the front hall of her home like a profane Alice from a PG-13 Wonderland.
“I do not know of which ‘what the shit’ you speak, Parrot Girl,” she replied. “But I am thirsty. And a bit peckish. Let’s see what’s in the fridge.”
Muttering to herself in a language Kendra didn’t recognize, Vannia went into the small kitchen with its table for two. There was orange juice in the fridge and some leftover cranberry-walnut chicken salad that smelled fine and a few croissants in the bread box, so they made sandwiches.
Half way through, Vannia said simply, “It’s just that I don’t know of anyone ever going that fast on the Narrows before. Even to get here in the time I did, I had to push myself. I thought of riding a Chaos Way, but was curious to see if you got hung up at any point.”
Kendra shook her head. “Nope. Felt the same to me. Just… faster. Better. More natural.”
“Well aren’t you special,” in a nasal, prissy voice.
“Is that a movie quote?”
“Saturday Night Live. Church Lady.”
Kendra chewed and nodded. “I saw that once. Same actor from ‘Wayne’s World.’ The friend. Heath?”
“Garth.”
“What the heck kind of name is Garth?”
“Better than ‘Heath,’ I think.”
“Fair enough.”
They finished eating and Kendra rinsed the plates and glasses in the sink and put them into the nearly empty dishwasher. Most weeks, she and her mom only had to do two or three loads. Lots of take-out. Lots of single-serving microwave meals.
“Speaking of Mom… I wonder where she is…”
“At work?” answered Vannia, looking at the microwave oven and then pushing random buttons to make it beep.
“She works from home, mostly. She could be on an interview. The publisher she works for has an office downtown and she goes there a couple of times a month. Or she could just be out shopping or something.”
“She thinks you’re at a friend’s for the summer, right?”
Kendra nodded. “Yeah. I told her a couple of stories. Kind of mixed up at the time, actually. First that I was with a friend. Then that my job had an internship out-of-town that would pay great. I had one of the guys at Bardonne’s fake up some paperwork for that. I figured I needed a few weeks to figure out a longer term story or plan. And to decide if I was going to come back here.”
“You’d go back to your Mundane life? Home and school and… whatever else this was?” Vannia gestured at the house as if it were a plot of dirt on an empty plain.
Kendra thought. “No. I don’t think so. But there are some questions I have. What happened to my mom.
To my dad. I understand what I’ve been told. About her leaving Release, him getting in trouble with Increase. But I’ve heard two pretty different versions of the story now.”
“Two?” Vannia was sitting with her feet up on the kitchen counter, idly playing with her glass. Her blue, lace-trimmed skirt had fallen down around her waist and Kendra could see that she was wearing Hello Kitty leggings underneath.
“Yeah. My uncle Bran told me that there’s no way I could be Morgan White’s child. That I came too late, basically, after Morgan had disappeared. But Rain told me mom was pregnant with me when she lost her Reckoning. And I have the note in that book…”
“You mentioned the note before,” Vannia said. “But it wasn’t there last time you looked, right?”
“Yes. That’s right. I gave it to the librarian clerk, Wallace, to look into. He said that there are Ways of making things disappear and reappear and he might be able to find something out.”
Vannia nodded and put her feet on the floor, little black Mary Janes tapping on the linoleum.
“So we hang out here for a bit? Wait for your mom?”
Kendra thought about it for a moment. “Yes. I’d like to at least say ‘hi’ to her before going… wherever I’m going next. I could also use a few more changes of clothes if I’m going to be on the road for a while. Come to think of it, let’s get started on a bag or two.”
They went up the two flights of stairs to her room on the top floor and Vannia marveled at odd things like the lighted make-up mirror and some troll pencil-toppers with hair that got messy when you spun them between your palms.
Kendra found an old backpack that she hadn’t used in years and started filling it with spare underwear, socks, t-shirts and some other items when she heard the door open down below.
“Stay up here for now,” she whispered to Vannia. “I’ll signal you if I think it’s OK to come down.”
“Spy stuff! Fun! What’s the signal!”
“I’ll holler up, ‘Hey, Vannia! Come down and meet my mom!’”
The little blonde assassin nodded knowingly. “Sneaky. Got it, chief.”
Kendra patted her friend on the arm and ran down the stairs two at a time. While she’d been feeling more confident in her Reckoning as the weeks went by, she was still, in some ways, just a kid who missed her mom and she hadn’t been apart from her for this long ever before. As she spun around the last corner of the stairs at the bottom, her mom turned and gave her a big smile.