Alisiyad

by Sarah R. Suleski

  They rode along the southern rim of the valley, falling into silence. Liseli shut her eyes and tried not to think about anything. She ended up thinking of Russ. She saw his face in her mind, and wondered if she would forget what it looked like, since she had no picture of him to remind her. She clenched her teeth and fought back tears, then wondered if she could kill Alisiya by suddenly reaching out to snap her neck, or choke her from behind . . . . But she thought of the dog underneath them, who seemed to obey Alisiya with complete devotion, and thought better of it.

  “There is something I can do, though,” Alisiya broke the silence, as if there had been none since she last spoke. “Most people who are not Keys cannot even see or sense where there is a Gate. I can see them. They are like glass walls to me. That is how I saw you through the Gate by your Mill. I watched you through the glass. So far I have visited the Gates only in my Child form . . . even so, if I were a true Key my soul could pass through the worlds without my body, as I’ve walked through this world without it.”

  Liseli didn’t reply. She only wished that Alisiya would be silent and leave her alone. She would not encourage her to speak more. She had nothing to say to her.

  Alisiya moved her head back and forth, gazing all around her. Liseli realized that she was happy! The monster was glad to be out and about, in the flesh. She ground her teeth together to swallow her anger.

  “It is different, this way,” Alisiya observed. “When I sent myself out I could see and hear the world, but I could never really feel it . . . . It was always like a dream. But this is real.” She took a deep breath. “I could get used to this, the air, the warmth of the rising sun, the whole . . . the feel of it.”

  “Being alive,” Liseli let out the words in a whoosh of air. “Russ . . . and Eliasha . . . liked to be alive.”

  “So did my mother.” Alisiya tightened her hands in the hair on the dog’s neck.

  “So? Did they kill her?” Liseli’s voice broke.

  “No, but their deaths serve my purpose, to make my father pay for my mother’s death, which he caused,” Alisiya said calmly.

  Liseli shook her head, fighting the urge wrap her hands around the neck before her and squeeze. “Rot. In. Hell.”

  “Be quiet,” said Alisiya, and Liseli felt as if something bit down on her mouth. She winced, and stifled a cry. “We’re nearing a place where people live. The Gate is up by the waterfall, and we must skirt the village to reach it. We cannot be seen.”

  Liseli shut her eyes and reminded herself that she would be free once Alisiya was through her precious gate. She stopped herself from thinking about anything beyond that, and put her hands to her eyes, finding pain and solace in remembering Russ, who did not live in her world anymore, because she had let him down.

  Chapter 23 ~ Mother’s Day, part 4

  “The Chaiorra Falls,” Alisiya said, breaking Liseli from a dream, which Liseli forgot as soon as it ended. The sun was flooding the valley, pale but insistent. It was Sunday morning.

  She looked up, and saw that they’d come to a rocky plateau up above the village, where the river ran down from the mountains into the valley. Alisiya stopped the dog on an outcropping near the side of the waterfall, and slid off its back. Liseli followed, standing on sore legs, looking down over the ledge and wondering if she could escape Alisiya by jumping.

  “This is where I had my vision,” Alisiya said, stretching her arms and smiling, her eyes as clear and blue as a cloudless sky. “Time opened before me and showed me what would happen . . . what will happen now.” She held out a hand. “I can feel the spray of the water,” she said, with wonder.

  “Where’s the gate?” Liseli crossed her arms. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Alisiya turned back to her, fixing those eyes on her for a few moments. “There’s a cave,” she said finally, “behind the waterfall.” She reached out to take Liseli’s arm and draw her along, but Liseli jerked it back.

  “I’ll follow,” she said coldly.

  Alisiya shrugged, and walked toward the edge of the waterfall. She paused, pointing. “Do you see the space under the ledge? The fall juts out, so you can walk under it without hardly getting wet. The cave is under the ledge, in the back. Go on.”

  Liseli stared dubiously at the narrow space between the rock and the falling water, but she didn’t want to listen to Alisiya any longer than necessary, so she took a step onto the lower ledge, sliding out under the falls.

  She could hear nothing but the steady drum of water over her as she pressed herself against the rock and looked around. Alisiya followed close behind her, and said in her ear, “There, you should be able to see it now.”

  Between the ledges, behind the waterfall, was a room made of rock, large enough for perhaps a dozen people to stand inside if they were careful not to jostle each other. It went back a little ways from the water, and in the back there was a dark, narrow opening.

  “I see the cave opening,” Liseli replied, raising her voice over the water.

  “Yes, do you see the Gate inside it?”

  Liseli saw only blackness, but she moved toward it. On the other side is another world, she told herself, and braced for the transition. She remembered that when she’d left the Mill it felt like falling . . . like sand falling through an hourglass. She put her hand on the edge of the opening and peered in, still seeing darkness. She wondered what would meet her on the other side. Another wooded glen in the sunshine of a May afternoon? Darkness? A road of endless gray, like in her dreams? She shook her head, and looked back at Alisiya.

  “Hold my hand, and take me through,” the pale woman said eagerly, her eyes glowing white with excitement. Liseli reluctantly took her hand and stepped into the cave.

  She found herself in cool darkness. The waterfall still hammered its way down the mountainside above and around her, sounding distant and muted. Water dripped steadily into puddles on cold stone; she heard the gentle plop, plop, plop. She put out her free hand and felt damp rock.

  Alisiya’s fingernails dug into her wrist and she gasped. “We are in the cave,” she said in a low voice. “We passed the Gate but did not go through. Don’t think that you can deceive me, Liseli Luenford. Do not skirt past the Gate!”

  “How could I have? The opening was too narrow for me to—” Liseli broke off as pain lanced through her head.

  “You shut your eyes to the Gate and passed it by,” Alisiya insisted. “I told you, I can see the Gate, so it’s no use pretending.”

  “I can’t see it.” Liseli tried to twist her arm free. She was sick of Alisiya grabbing her, leaving bruises all over her arm.

  “Of course you can.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  Alisiya blew out a sigh. “Come back,” she said, “and try again.”

  Liseli did as she was told, again. And again. And again, again, again, again. It didn’t work. Over and over they entered the cave and over and over Alisiya dragged her back out, sending pain through her body and digging into her arm, yelling at her in increased frustration. Liseli hit back and tried not to cry out, insisting that she was trying as hard as she could to see the Gate and walk through it. Dark thoughts pelted her like stones and made her want to jump from the fall and end everything, the pain, the guilt, the sadness. But then Alisiya would drag her out from the morass, threatening that next time it would be worse, and next time it always was.

  Finally Alisiya took her back out into the sunshine beside the falls, and sat her down on a rock, then lectured her at length about fate, destiny, obedience, and letting go. Liseli barely listened, staring at the blue eyes as they changed color, flashing and fading and swimming from one shade to another. She closed her ears and mind to everything, wanting just to be left alone, in the quiet, where she could sleep and dream again.

  Alisiya began to pace. “I don’t understand it,” she muttered. “Years, and years, I watched you. No one else came to that Mill, but you; you were drawn to it, like a Key to a Gate. I know that it is more difficult for a female
Key to realize her gift, so I was patient. But now I have done away with your distractions, you believe . . . you . . . .” She paused, turning back to Liseli. “It is more difficult for female Keys, according to my father’s writings about other Keys he met. You must attain the right state, make yourself an empty vessel to float through the boundaries of nature. Men, on the other hand, are born invaders, and take to it more naturally.” Her mouth twisted into a grim smile.

  Liseli didn’t like the thoughtful tone to Alisiya’s voice, or the darkening of her eyes as she bent down to look into Liseli’s. “Stand up,” she said, taking Liseli by the hands. “Let me look at you closely.”

  Liseli allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. Alisiya held Liseli’s arms out to the side and stared into her eyes, holding them unblinking in her steady gaze. Liseli stared back impassively, trying not to think, or feel. She felt dizzy, as if she were drowning again, but it was only in Alisiya’s eyes. She saw herself in the blue, standing with her arms spread out and a blank, helpless look on her face. At least, she thought it was her.

  Alisiya dropped her hands. “It’s as I thought.” She nodded, crossing her arms and surveying Liseli with a raised eyebrow. “You have conceived.”

  “What?” The words didn’t register at first.

  “I know when there is life in my world, and I see new life growing in you,” Alisiya frowned at her, as if she’d done something terribly wrong.

  “You mean I’m pregnant? How can that . . . you can’t . . . it would be too soon to tell, you can’t,” Liseli sputtered, then broke off abruptly. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. Your child grows rapidly, much faster than a normal child. It’s the River’s doing — I was the same way. Fully grown after just five months.”

  Liseli sank back down and crossed her arms over her abdomen, not knowing what to think. If Alisiya told the truth, if she was pregnant, and it was growing unnaturally fast, what did that mean? Fear gripped her. She couldn’t handle something like this, not now, not all alone and reeling. I’m going to have a baby. And soon. I’m going to be a mother; no, I’m a mother right now. She ran through each thought again, testing them. They were foreign thoughts, ones she hadn’t even begun to plan for. Fear grabbed at her, but unexpectedly did not hold. Suddenly the thought lifted her. Life. There is life in my world.

  She knew then that every dark thought Alisiya had flung at her was not true — she had something to live for and it was not to fulfil Alisiya’s destiny and be discarded. She would soon have a child.

  “You were not thinking,” Alisiya was saying. She had begun to pace. “I should never have let you go to him, I realize this is partly my fault for thinking I could make you come to me voluntarily, but still. You were not thinking. And now here we are, and this is what comes of not thinking.” She stopped pacing.

  Liseli looked up. I shouldn’t have come here. Fear grabbed and took hold. Alisiya crouched down in front of her. I should have fought harder against the pain.

  “You have only just begun to feel it,” Alisiya said grimly. “But it’s your own doing.” She peeled Liseli’s arms away from her womb — Liseli tried to fight, but found her arms weak as gelatin. “I wouldn’t have to do this if you hadn’t slept with him in the first place. If you’d gone to the River that night like I told you to, this would be completely unnecessary.” Alisiya’s eyes were black as she held Liseli’s gaze frozen on her. She placed one thin, pale hand against Liseli.

  The pain was small. A prick of burning, slight discomfort. A small pain for a small death. But in that moment she was lifted high above the earth to glimpse all the could have, should have, would have beens that were dying in an instant and would never be. Just as soon as she knew there was life to be killed, it was gone, and she was flung back to the hard rock ground. There everything seemed to break at once; mind, spirit, body, bones, life, and she was on the gray road again, staring down into the swamps of gray and the rivers of gray, and the nothingness of what good she’d ever done.

  The girl with the smile who was a rock in a field of rocks was there. She cried into the rivers, weeping gray tears, saying, You did not save me, and now a vision is all I will ever be. But you will always see me as I would have been, could have been, should have been. As I am. As I always will be. We the River Children never die, and never lived, not really. Not really.

  Liseli turned and ran. She did not think, or feel; there were no thoughts or feelings in the deathworld. The river of tears seemed foreign to her there, it mocked the stillness and threatened her — threatened her with what she didn’t know, but she ran from it. She ran from the unknown feeling. The child crying the tears was not hers anymore, if she ever had been, if she had ever belonged to anywhere or anyone but the gray river, the road, whatever it was, Liseli didn’t know. . . . She just ran. But even as she ran, through a sea of nothing, she knew she was dreaming, trapped, and going nowhere.

  Chapter 24 ~ Love

  When Liseli woke she lay still, staring at the grass blades before her face, listening to the roar of the waterfall. She let ants crawl over her, skittering across her nose and tickling at the dried tears on her cheek with their tiny antennae. Then finally she brushed them away and pushed herself up, twisting around to blink into the sun. She hadn’t slept long at all, only a few minutes, perhaps, but Alisiya was gone.

  The dog was still there. It lay on the ground, muzzle resting on its front paws as it watched her. When she sat up, it sat up, a gold light kindled in its eyes. Liseli backed against the rock instinctively, holding her breath. But the dog just sat and watched, making no move to tear her apart. Liseli ventured another look around. There was still no sign of Alisiya. Perhaps she was in the cave, trying to make the Gate open up for her. It would be too much to hope that she was gone for good.

  Liseli swallowed, her throat dry with sleep, and she looked at the waterfall a moment. But she didn’t want to drink from the Chaiorra. It was Alisiya’s river.

  She rested her head against the rock and stared at the sky, thinking. Nothing that had happened seemed real, at that moment. She felt nothing to tell her she had ever been pregnant — perhaps that was some lie or trick of Alisiya’s. After all, how could she really tell? She would have been, what, three days pregnant? It was a lie. It had to be.

  But it’s not. She put an arm across her eyes and shook her head. It was unreal, and yet felt as real as Eliasha’s death.

  Still, she was calm, now; calm, and alone, with a dog. Alisiya had left her for awhile, and just knowing that made her feel light, released, clear-headed. She didn’t feel she could cry if she wanted to, because she was empty. She would mourn later, she told herself. She wouldn’t think now of the why’s, just the how’s.

  The voices telling her to despair and give up were silent — they were Alisiya’s voices. Her own voice was clear: You will never do what she wants. While you are alive you will never give in to her again. Never again. It is not your fault. It is hers, it is her doing, and you will make her pay. It’s only what’s right.

  But do what? And how?

  Liseli dropped her arm from her face and looked at the dog. She knew she was powerless against Alisiya. Perhaps, if she had just come to this place, and had never drunk the water that gave Alisiya such hold over her, she would have a chance. But it was too late for that. The only thing she could do was refuse to help Alisiya, and endure the punishments thrown at her. There seemed no punishment left but death. Alisiya had taken or broken everything else.

  But what is it that she wants from me? What on earth am I supposed to be able to do?

  Think back, she told herself. She hadn’t wanted to think back all day, because every time she did she ran into Russ. She didn’t want to think of him in past tense, and that was all there was left, besides not thinking at all.

  She forced herself to think back.

  A long, long time ago, it seemed, they had been in the Mill. Back home, where things made sense most of the time. Back home, where a bad day or
a good day was defined by whether or not Russ was late for work. At least, that’s how simple it seemed thinking back. Thinking way back, to home. She shook her head. They had been in the Mill. She had been upset, why had she been upset? What was there to be upset about? She’d been unhappy with her life. It had seemed so small, and it wasn’t going anywhere, it was uninspiring, uneventful; it would not make a good story. That was why she’d been upset. And she was embarrassed, because there was Russ, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. He’d come to her secret place and looked at her like she’d lost her mind, and made her whole world shrink a little smaller.

  And then he’d turned it inside out and made it disappear.

  Liseli lifted her hands to her face, covering her eyes, shutting out the dog’s watchful gaze. When she was alone with her memory she saw it all clearly. She’d followed him out of her Mill into a world that was not hers, and would never be hers, where she could only become lost. For so long she’d wanted him to surprise her, show her a face she hadn’t seen anywhere else, take her away, become something different.

  And he had.

  Liseli started to laugh into her hands. Her shoulders shook and she shook her head with them. Only Russ could do so much and be so hopeless; only he could open up an entire world without knowing how he did it or how to undo it; only he could do everything without trying and fail to do anything when he tried.

  And she missed him. She missed him so terribly much.

  Her exhausted laughter turned to tears pooling in her hands. It seemed a hundred years since she’d seen him last, a hundred years of wandering in and out of death, when all it had been was a couple days of dreaming. It may as well have been a hundred years.

  She felt warm breath against her hand, and stiffened mid sob. A cold nose nudged her, and she screamed, rolling away. The dog inched back warily as she opened her eyes. She stopped screaming. They stared at each other, both crouching tensely, waiting for the other to move. It was a giant of a dog, with jet-black hide that glistened under its fur and eyes that glowed orange, the colors of the setting sun. But it wasn’t the dog that had attacked her, or the dog that had attacked Russ. It was not a dog that had killed Byzauki or Ilia, or anyone. It wasn’t a hellhound.