Welcome to the Slipstream

by Natalka Burian

  The outline of different shapes moved through me. It felt like parts of different faces: the hard cartilage of a nose, the jutting bone of a chin, the stiff brush of an eyebrow, a lush, plump cheek. It was like I was swallowing down all of these faces, like some insatiable cannibal. It didn’t hurt or feel bad in any way. It felt like drinking water out under the sun. When I’d consumed all of the faces, the letters started to fall, slowly, languidly—enormous, firework-sized letters, one at a time: a code, a message. COULD YOU FIND ME? Color bloomed out and around the letters, the same magenta that had swirled through Laurel’s camp and had been painted on Mom’s face. I just watched the letters fall and fall.

  I don’t know how long I stood there like that, but I knew I was still standing somewhere, because eventually my legs collapsed under me and I dropped with a stinging thud.

  Everything went dark. The sky, the voice, the faces, the letters, the light behind my eyes—it all flashed up and then contracted into a pinprick of light, and then, turned into nothing. I was alone, completely alone in the silent dark.

  I woke up in daylight. I sat up, expecting to feel like a burn victim, or a pedestrian hit by a car. At the very least, I expected my injured hand to be a real mess. I lifted myself as slowly as I could and actually felt okay. I looked at my legs in my jeans—maybe I’m paralyzed from the waist down, I thought. But as I experimentally clenched the muscles in my thighs and calves, I realized I was fine.

  I rolled to my side and pushed up to standing. Was I taller? I felt taller. I wanted to find a mirror, certain that something about me was different, probably grotesquely so. What if I had the face of a bird or something? I put a hand up to feel around, and there was my regular face. It felt pretty filthy, but it felt the same—no feathers or beaks. What had happened? Was I dead?

  Ulrike’s olive-green backpack was covered with dust but still there, so I figured she and Laurel and the camp were real. I didn’t think I was dead anymore, because it didn’t seem likely that you could bring someone else’s belongings to the afterlife with you. My mouth was so dry, it felt like the skin on the insides of my cheeks and on my tongue had broken open. Maybe just a little water, I thought, and then I’ll keep looking for Mom. I unzipped Ulrike’s bag and opened the cap. As I brought the jug to my lips I saw in a cloudy reflection a smear of dried blood streaked across my forehead, cheekbones, and the bridge of my nose. It was blood from the day before, where I’d wiped my mauled hand after running into the face. The face.

  I turned around, then I turned around again. There was no face, just trees. Only those dense pine trees all around the oval of sand, and me, standing in the middle like the pupil of an eye.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I knew I had to leave that sandy oval, that enormous eye, but I didn’t want to. Part of me expected that I wouldn’t be able to move beyond the golden border. Maybe whatever had happened would hold me there. But when I took my first step onto the gravel outside of the eye, the earth didn’t shake and crack open. The sky didn’t start raining fire or hail.

  I stood, waiting for something to bloom out of that quiet. A direction, a thought, anything. Think about what you do have and what you do know. Mom was sure that she’d survive. Everything she’d done, even the most terrible and painful and difficult things, she’d done because she knew she’d survive. It was this same optimistic certainty, I thought, that would guide me to her. I stood up, and decided to follow whatever copy of that certainty Mom had passed down to me. I let the blood in my veins take over, and I moved only where I was certain I should move. If I saw a scuff in the sand, or a spiny plant that listed to one side, that’s where I moved. If I saw nothing, then I moved only where I absolutely felt I should go. I drank a few tiny sips of what water I had left—not too much, just enough to keep from falling down.

  In the bright daylight, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the overlay of even brighter flashes. White-hot letters at the corners of my vision floated around me as I walked, the same hanging, dissolving C-O-U-L-D-Y-O-U-F-I-N-D-M-E. Ulrike’s bag thumped against my back. Some of the twists in the stone looked like letters, and I could swear I was reading them, receiving a reassuring message. I shook my head, trying to clear my vision, but was too dizzy from the heat and thirst to beat away those images.

  When I followed a bend in the natural slope of the canyon side, I knew Mom would be there, like I’d already been told. And she was.

  “Sorry!” I shouted out, stupidly, like I’d just stepped on someone’s toe in line at the airport. MOM-MOM-MOM thundered through my head. I flung Ulrike’s backpack away and knelt down next to her. She was dirty, too, and missing most of her robes. What scraps still clung to her were stained rust colored and black. She looked like she’d just fallen there, the way her arms and legs were splayed. Check her breathing, I told myself. Anyone who’s seen even one movie knows that much.

  It felt weird to touch Mom like this, like an intrusion. Also, I was terrified that she was really dead. Her skin was cold and clammy, and her limbs flopped around as I moved them out of the way. They weren’t stiff, the way dead things were supposed to be. A faint tingle of relief prickled behind my eyes. I pressed my fingers into the skin at the base of her throat. At first I didn’t feel anything, only my own wild pulse, the same rhythm that beat in that spot behind my eyes. Calm down and pay attention, I told myself.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I said as I pressed my fingers even deeper into the side of her neck. The tiniest flicker tapped back out at me, a very weak I’m-here-I’m-here-I’m-here. I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, but Mom recoiled just the littlest bit from my fierce poking. I leaned over her, my filthy face just centimeters from her filthy face, and I listened. She was breathing, but it was weak. Okay, I thought. Now what? Was I supposed to do CPR? Was I not supposed to do CPR? She was probably really dehydrated. Could I make her drink some water? Was that even possible? Could you kill an unconscious person by pouring water in her mouth? I opened Ulrike’s backpack and unscrewed the water jug.

  I splashed a little water over Mom’s lips, but it didn’t seem like any actually got in her mouth. I massaged the lower half of Mom’s face and pried open her jaw. I poured in some water, just a bit, the same amount that would fill a sewing thimble. I smoothed down the sides of her neck with my free hand, coaxing her to swallow. She coughed or gagged a little, but it looked like she’d drunk most of what I forced her to.

  I waited out the morning, every once in a while splashing a little water into Mom’s mouth and easing it down her throat. It was hard to stay so still. There wasn’t really anything else I could do for her. I tried to compose her body into a more comfortable-looking position, but gave up after every change I made looked more unnatural and painful.

  My throat burned with thirst as the hours passed, but I couldn’t bring myself to squander the water. The sun beat down on the top of my head and the back of my neck, and I took two micro sips from the jug, but felt pretty bad about it.

  Ida, I thought. What would you do? The sun moved in the sky, and I felt my skin crisp up under its light. Mom’s skin was already sunburned, and I didn’t know what a sunburn on top of sunburn would do. It couldn’t be helping her dehydration.

  I put my hands in her armpits and gently shuffled her body toward the meager shade of a twisted juniper tree. I didn’t get very far. Maybe I jostled her too much, or maybe she really did have a broken neck, because she moaned a little. I stopped right away and put my hand on her forehead.

  “Mom? Can you hear me? It’s Van.”

  I took another tiny sip of water and topped Mom off, too. Was the moaning a good thing or a bad thing? I couldn’t tell. Was she waking up or dying? I rubbed my grubby face and could barely feel the skin underneath all of the grime and dried blood. I kept my eyes mostly on Mom. I even held her hand a little bit, thinking it might help.

  I stood up and walked laps around her. Even with the intermittent mini walks, I felt tingling in my fingers and toes. That can’t be good, I thought. Alex
and Marine had to be on their way back. At the very least, Alex and Marine would come looking for us. I wondered if Ulrike would be able to track us. After all, I’d left that trail of blood for her part of the way, so there was that.

  Another sound came out of Mom, a faint groan, so faint I thought at first it was the creak of tree limbs. I leaned my ear close to her mouth and focused on her closed eyes. She made a half-gagging, half-choking sound. I sat up and poured a little water in her mouth again. She coughed and nearly all of it ran out, down her chin. I watched, wistfully, as all of the moisture was sucked away into the earth.

  “Mom?” I whispered close to her ear. I knelt down so close that my knees knocked into her side.

  She coughed again, and this time moved her mouth, opening and closing it. Her lips were so chapped, I knew that if she tried to talk they would bleed.

  “More,” she grated out. The jug was so light in my hands—it was bad, bad news.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to drink too much too fast. You might throw up.”

  Mom nodded: a clear, sentient nod. I felt about a million times better.

  “Do you want to try to sit up?” I asked.

  She nodded but held a finger up, like she was telling me to wait a second. She opened her eyes. She opened her eyes and she recognized me. I just knew it.

  “Oh, Mom,” I said, wanting to throw myself down on top of her. But I didn’t. I held back—I didn’t pounce and I didn’t cry. I wiped a dribble of water from the space between her mouth and her chin. She nodded a little and tried to get up by herself. When I saw what she meant to do, I crawled around behind her and lifted her up. I sat in the dirt like a gymnast stretching, with my legs straddled as far apart as I could get them. I pulled Mom against my chest and held her up. My wounded hand throbbed.

  “I’m dizzy,” she said. Her words came slow and thick. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know. Arizona somewhere.”

  “Is Laurel here?”

  “No one’s here, Mom. Just us.”

  “Is Ida here?”

  “No, Mom, she’s in Vegas. In the hospital. Remember?”

  “I don’t know.” Mom shook her head.

  “Bullshit, Mom, you know.” I was shocked that I’d said it, but it was true. I could feel the tension in her body when she said Ida’s name, when she remembered something was wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and leaned back against me. I rested my chin on her dusty shoulder and put my nose in her filthy hair.

  “We have to go back for her.” A fluid, urgent heat swelled around the words I spoke.

  “I know,” she said.

  • • •

  We spent the next few hours figuring out how to get Mom’s body to work correctly. I propped her against the juniper tree and slowly fed her the rest of the water. I couldn’t trust her to take the nearly empty jug because she just tipped it back and glugged away. Together, we bent her knees up and down, bringing blood back into the muscles of her legs. We needed to find the trail together. Leaving Mom alone while I went for help was out of the question.

  I broke off little pieces of Ulrike’s protein bar and gave her the crumbs. She ate slowly, and after a few hours the bar and almost every drop of water was gone. Mom made me drink the last small sip. I zipped the empty jug back into Ulrike’s bag. If we were going to die, littering wasn’t going to be the last thing I did. It was sunset, and that rose-gold of the canyon filtered the air all around us. Mom looked better, but not great. We both knew this was it. Neither of us was going to be any better than we were right that minute.

  Mom stood carefully, one arm on me and one arm on the tree she’d been propped against. We rose together with the speed of plants growing out of the ground. We moved so slowly that I got a little woozy watching the earth recede one fraction of a centimeter at a time. When we were up, Mom gripped the side of the tree and I brought over the branch I’d broken down to walking-stick height. She stabbed it into the sandy soil and we began to walk—incredibly slowly, but we walked.

  “You don’t know the way,” Mom said, not like a question.

  We shuffled out of the cover of the juniper tree into the fading sunlight.

  “Do you want me to try to climb up something? Maybe I’ll be able to see the camp.”

  Mom shook her head. “Do you smell something?” she asked, her head cocked to the side.

  I looked at her, and at first thought she meant us, since we were pretty disgusting. But, as I sniffed the air, I definitely smelled smoke. There was a fire within smelling distance.

  “Which way do you think it is?” I asked her.

  She kept her head tilted and closed her eyes. She leaned her face into the faint breeze that swirled around us. She lifted a hand and pointed: that way. I nodded and we walked, slow as ants. Mom stopped a few times to check that the scent was still there.

  “It’s stronger,” she said, and looked to me for confirmation. When I nodded, she started to walk a little faster.

  “Careful, Mom, please.”

  The walking stick dragged along beside us as we struck out into the near-darkness. Please, I thought, please let whoever started this fire be a good person. We moved around a wide swath of shrubs and saw the glimmer of the fire through a tangle of leaves.

  “Hello?” I shouted.

  “Hello?” A voice shouted back—an accented voice. A tall, slim shadow approached: Ulrike.

  “She is found!” Ulrike beamed and slipped Mom’s arm over her shoulder. Which was good, because I was shaking. Ulrike flung Mom’s walking stick to the side and we wobbled over, like some hulking three-bodied mutant, to Ulrike’s fire. She’s alone, I realized, grateful there weren’t any others. But it made me wonder—something’s happened at the camp. Mom collapsed on the ground and put her head between her knees.

  “Okay?” Ulrike asked.

  Mom nodded.

  “She needs some more water, I think. And food.” I put my hands up to my face and mimed eating a sandwich.

  “Yes,” Ulrike said. She smacked me on the shoulder and removed her backpack from my arms. I sunk down next to Mom. Ulrike unzipped a larger trail pack, the kind with a steel frame and dangling, tied-on accessories. She’d only just settled in for the night—none of the neatly packed items in her bag had been removed. She shook out a snail-rolled silver blanket and draped it over Mom’s shoulders. Ulrike’s mostly full jug of water was already out by the fire, but she rummaged in her pack for a chipped, enameled cup. She filled it halfway with water and passed it to Mom. She handed me a small fabric pouch filled with nuts. I looked up at her, dazed.

  Ulrike took the bag back and shook some nuts out into my palm. Mom and I ate and drank while Ulrike set up the camp. She cleaned away the dried blood on my hand with a baby wipe and smeared some ointment on it from a tin jar in her pack. She rested her fleece jacket over my back like a cape and gave Mom and me each a shoulder clasp. Mom and I leaned against each other and breathed in the dark, merciful scent of the fire.

  Ulrike took something else from her pack—a phone. My phone. She looked at it and then at me. She pressed it into my hand and put a finger to her lips, puckered in a silent shh. I nodded, ready to cry with gratefulness again. “Thanks, Ulrike,” I said.

  Mom drooped down until her head was in my lap. I wasn’t sure when she’d fallen asleep. I smoothed the silver blanket over her. Ulrike nodded in approval, pointed at Mom, and gave me a thumbs-up. I couldn’t help smiling at her. She’d really saved our lives.

  “Thanks for looking for us,” I said.

  “Most welcome.” She spread a narrow waterproof tarp over the dirt behind me. She smacked the plastic-covered ground, and I stretched out where she pointed. Ulrike practically carried Mom out of my lap and onto the spot beside me, and then spread the silver blanket over us both.

  • • •

  The fire still smoldered in the morning when I woke up. I wasn’t sure if Ulrike had slept at all because she was already doing calisthenics by
the fireside. I shook Mom awake. We needed to hurry. Ulrike had already put out some breakfast for us: two protein bars lined up neatly side by side, a small pile of dried mango, and her jug of water. Mom ate more easily than she had the day before. She seemed steadier. Her movements were less wobbly, and even her eyes seemed more clear. Whatever Laurel had given her in the camp had worn off.

  I let Mom finish most of the water while Ulrike packed up. The walk back was fast—not the pace, but the distance. Mom held on to my arm even at the most narrow places, where we had to crowd together. She looked over at me a lot, and I couldn’t tell if it was because she was confused or because she was sorry.

  I heard the camp before I could see it. No drums or music, just a low hum of human sounds—voices and footsteps. Ulrike looked back at us, frowning.

  “No,” she said, and made a thumbs down with her fist. “Go straight to road, yes?”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “No good,” Ulrike shook her head. “Police.” She pointed to her chest. “No visa. I go back to Sedona, await Laurel.”

  “Oh,” I said, startled that I could feel even more gratitude than I had the night before. “I can’t believe you came back to look for us. Thank you.”

  Ulrike extended an arm and shook my hand.

  “I’ll never forget this, Ulrike,” Mom said. Ulrike gave her a little bow, and then galloped away.

  Mom and I continued in a feeble shuffle. My body had started to hurt the night before from all of the walking and dehydration. Maybe it had hurt before then, but I only let myself notice it once we were relatively safe and warm under Ulrike’s wing.

  When the camp fell into sight, we saw the dark blue figures of the police moving through the crowd. The violence of a raid was missing—their dissembling of the camp seemed more somber and funereal. The decorations that had been strung up to welcome Mom back were mostly destroyed, and rumpled garlands snaked across the red dirt like letters from an alien alphabet. The mangled echo of walkie-talkies bounced back to where we stood.