by T S Wieland
He looked away from her, with a blank stare that gave her the impression he was distancing himself. She couldn’t make out why or how she knew, but somehow, deep within his strange gaze, he was still wearing a helmet to cover himself. He was shielding himself from something, and only a faint light in his vivid colored gaze shone through.
“Sorry if I get sand on you,” he said, not bothering to look her in the eyes.
“It’s okay.” Ally felt nervous for some strange reason.
Sem carried her back into the red bedroom she had awoken in and placed her on the bed. He walked over to the closet, opened it, grabbed a red blanket from the top shelf, and threw it down on the bed next to her.
“There’s an extra blanket if you need it.” He walked over to the doorway and turned around. Ally sat on the bed and looked over at him. “Holler if you need anything else. Otto or I will come.”
“Thanks.”
Sem looked away as he shut the door. He stood at the door for a moment, still holding the handle, thinking to himself. He shook his head and continued back downstairs.
Ally lay back down on the bed and once more waded through her thoughts and questions, wondering if she would ever be able to fall asleep again knowing where she was now. She was the first person from her world to travel to a foreign universe, only to be rescued by a man who had traveled to them all. A story which she undoubtedly knew no one back home would believe. That is, when she returned home…
Chapter 7
A Lifeboat Drifting in an Ocean of the Cosmos
Ally awoke to see a white note, resting on top of a stack of folded clothes, sitting on the nightstand next to her. She sat up from her bed and read the note.
Hope these fit. Feel free to come down whenever you're ready. ~ Otto
Ally picked up the stack of clothes and examined them for a moment. She lifted the shirt up to her chest and compared the size. Practically a perfect fit, although the red and white plaid style didn't suit her fashion taste. Never the less, she was happy to finally have a set of clothes that fit her.
As Ally slipped the shirt on over her head, she stared down at herself and quickly realized she had put it on backward. Looking down at the shirt tag below her chin, she noticed a name written on it. Ally took the shirt off and turned the neck inside out to read the name written in pen.
Chapter 8
Islands in the Sky
Sem sat with his feet up on the windowsill in the living room, gazing out at the front garden. His chair leaned back on two legs. The sunshine glimmered through the window, illuminating his white shirt. His boots sat on the floor next to him, laces untied, ready to be put on at a moment’s notice.
He turned to look at the clock on the shelf and watched it stop ticking for a moment. The second hand ticked backward once, then forward again, rapidly catching up to the lost moment. He stared back out the window, closing his eyes as he felt the sunshine radiate around him. He desperately longed for the warmth and relaxation and was now left to enjoy the moment in peace.
Ally delicately walked down the stairs wrapped in the red blanket he had given her, careful not to make any noise to disturb him. She strolled across the entryway, the blanket sliding across the dusty marble floor.
“Yes?” asked Sem. He could feel her presence pull him away from his thoughts.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you,” said Ally as she stepped into the room.
“You already have. So, what is it?”
She glanced down at the floor nervously. “I just wanted to talk to someone.”
“Well, I’m here. Talk away,” he said without looking away from the window.
Ally sat down on the red velvet couch behind him. “Where’s Otto?” she asked, looking around.
“He went to his meeting. Should be back later.”
Sem continued to relax in the silence. The clock ticked with each passing moment, growing louder and louder in the quiet room. The stillness soon became too much for Ally.
“How do you live with it?” she asked.
Sem sighed and opened his eyes. He continued to stare out the window.
“Live with what?”
“Your family? Your friends? All . . . gone.”
Sem shifted in his chair and slouched down further to get more comfortable. “Easy,” he replied. “I never had any.”
“You never had any family or friends?”
“I disappeared from my world when I was nine. I hardly recall anything before that.”
“Well, even at nine, you had to have remembered some things.”
“No,” said Sem closing his eyes again.
“Oh… I’m sorry.”
“For what? My past? It’s made my job as a guardian easier. The fewer people I know, the better things are.”
“A Guardian?”
“The title given to me by my mentor. When he first made the ARC, he gave himself the title of Guardian of Worlds. Making sure no one had to die alone, no one had to suffer alone, and no world would ever be destroyed so long as he could stop it.”
“That sounds like a big responsibility.”
Sem turned around and looked at her for a moment. He swiveled back around and stared back out the window. “I keep my focus on each person in need, never on the world I’m saving. Makes my life easier.”
“You never wanted to do anything else?”
“Nope,” he replied.
“Really?” she asked, eyes wide.
Sem sighed and spun around again to confront her.
“I said you could talk to me, not ask me questions about myself. So, if you’re going to keep at it, I’d suggest moving on to someone else.”
Ally stared blankly into his eyes. She hadn’t intended to anger him; she only felt a desperate need to get to know her savior better and to distract her mind from her own looming sadness.
“No, I just wanted someone to talk to. Wouldn’t hurt to get to know you better since I can’t-”
“You can’t go home? Well, don’t worry about getting to know me because no one ever gets the chance.”
“Why?”
“There’s a boarding house close by for new travelers like you. You’ll be moving down there later tomorrow.”
“What if I don’t plan on staying?” Ally stood up.
Sem laughed. “Where else would you go?”
“I’m going home,” Ally replied, trying to maintain her certainty.
Sem looked at her, a scowl of vexation on his face. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say. Let me ask you a quick question. How many people do you think I’ve saved in my time?”
Ally stared at him, unsure how to respond. “I don’t know, a few hundred?”
“Hundreds. Thousands maybe. And my mentor before saved several thousand. I’ve saved so many people like you that I’ve lost count. One after the other, they all said the same thing you’re saying now. ‘I want to go home. Thank you for saving my life. I’m forever in your debt.’ On and on. Yet the one thing they forget, the one little, minor, simple detail they all fail to realize . . . my job’s only half done.”
Sem looked over his shoulder at her. “You want to go home? How do you plan to get there? Because if you know a way out of this purgatory, please share it with everyone else so they’ll stop breathing down my neck.”
Ally sat back down on the couch. Despite the fear growing in her stomach, she cleared her throat and tried to glare back at him. She imagined herself trying to stand up against her own boss. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as they say.”
“Well the only will you’d be riding on, in that case, is mine. Without me or Otto, you're never going to get home, nor will anyone else. So, you best sit back and enjoy yourself here, because it doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere anytime soon.”
Sem sat back and clasped his fingers together in front of his mouth. His frustration bellowed out in each breath. He had grown tired of naïve people's optimism, as if they had been the ones spending hours each day
reading every book he’d ever collected. Working on every mathematical equation he could fathom and repairing every valuable component that failed with each delicate attempt.
He took a deep breath and lowered his head. Ally stood up and trudged towards the stairs, feeling the dam of emotions she’d held back beginning to break free once more.
Sem glanced over at Ally as she walked away, feeling compelled to say something. The thought of disappointing the person he once cared for most in the world with his selfish actions haunted him. His once better half’s loving, and lecturing voice lingered in his mind.
Sem spoke with a calm voice. “Look... I’m sorry… I’ve just heard the same story from so many other travelers like you. You all think this place is just in your imagination and that if you wish hard enough, you’ll end up back home. Almost like it’s a wonderland you never expected to stumble into.”
Ally turned around and looked at him. Sem stood up from his chair and approached her.
“I understand you want to go home, Ally. I just fail to understand why. Here, you get a chance at a fresh start. Something I know I wouldn’t hesitate to take if I had the chance. I just . . . need you, along with a lot of other people out there, to know that we’re working on it, and you all just have to hang in there for us and be patient.”
Ally nodded, glad to see her rescuer wasn’t all cold steel on the inside. “Thanks, Sem.”
She dashed towards him and leaned her head against his chest, still wrapped in her red blanket. Sem stood with his hands to his side, unsure whether to hug her or not. He raised his right hand up and patted her back while keeping his left hand at his side.
“I… uh… suppose you haven’t had a chance to step out back yet?” he asked as he stepped away from her.
She looked at him curiously. Ally shook her head.
He walked away from her and crossed the room to the back hallway. Sem waved her along. Ally followed him, shuffling her feet under the blanket. He unlocked the double doors to the balcony at the back of the house with a small grin on his face.
“Before I take you home, you at least have to see my home,” he said opening the doors, allowing the light to shine in.
Ally turned the corner. The glare from the sun on the horizon blinded her for a moment as she stepped outside.
As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she stood in awe. Her mouth gaping wide open with a growing joy. Painted before her, softly blended like oil on a canvas, was an elegant display of blue, orange, and pink spread across the evening clouded sky. A sunset like she had never before seen in her life. More vivid than any other. The sun, an ample blue shining in the sky, eternally bound to a smaller, more vibrant smaller yellow star, shone over a billowing field of clouds. A scattered field of massive, fragmented islands connected by grand stone and steel cable bridges inexplicably floated across the sky before her.
Ally stepped out further onto the stone balcony and gazed down. Below them, down a hill, rested a large, dense forest with a river flowing through it, ending at a waterfall that poured off the floating island endlessly into the sky. Out across the field of clouds, on the closest island nearby, stood a small city of towering skyscrapers accompanied by the sound of a bustling metropolis in the distance. Nestled on another island, far off to their right, attached by another long, large bridge, was a city decorated with Venetian-style architecture, filled with sandy-colored stone buildings with red rooftops.
Ally peered out over the horizon. She could see that each island was decorated with small cities, all built to resemble places across the world she remembered from back home: New York City, Rome, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, Jerusalem, London, all of them eerily familiar to home, like large chunks of time left adrift in the sky.
“This is . . .”
“Beautiful? Amazing? Astonishing? Inspiring?” asked Sem as he walked out onto the porch and stood next to her with his hands in his pockets.
“Awesome,” replied Ally with a smile.
“I haven’t heard that one, actually.”
“How did all this get here?”
“These islands are all that’s left of worlds that were destroyed. Most long before the ARC was ever made. Each one floats on its own pocket of fragmented space, or at least that’s what we think they float on.”
“How long have you all been here?”
“We can’t say. People here have never had any real way of keeping track. Could be a few hundred years, could even be millions. Kind of hard to keep a calendar around here.”
Ally stood marveling at the surreal landscape ahead of her, thinking of how much her father would have loved to see such as sight. The feeling of joy and wonder faded, leaving her longing to see her home again.
“Do you think we'll ever get to go home?” asked Ally as she stared back at him, frowning with a discouraged look.
Sem sighed and stared down at the railing.
“Listen… As I said before, I know you want to get back in a hurry, but the burden of finding a way home isn’t on you, Ally… It’s on me and Otto.”
He lifted his head up and looked over at her.
“I don’t honestly know how long it will take. But I can promise that I’ll do everything I can to get you home.”
Ally nodded at him and smiled, comforted by his sincerity. “Thanks, Sem… That really means a lot.”
Sem smiled back at her.
At the sudden roar of an engine overhead, the two of them jumped back from the railing as the underbelly of a small green-and-white plane flew over them. The pilot banked away, waving back at the two of them. Sem raised his arm and waved back.
“Show off,” Sem muttered.
“Who was that?” asked Ally as she looked out at the pilot.
“Merek. A friend of mine. Probably on his way over to help me.”
“He flies a plane?”
“What? You thought everyone living in the sky just rode bikes?”
Ally glared at him with her head cocked to one side.
“Do you fly?” she asked.
Sem laughed. “I wouldn’t be caught dead in an airplane, even if my life depended on it. Now, come on—I need to take you to buy some new clothes before he gets here.”
Ally tilted her head, finding irony in the fact someone living among a city in the clouds would have a fear of flying.
Sem turned around and walked back into the house with Ally following.
“A guy willing to take a woman clothes shopping? This definitely isn’t my world,” Ally replied.
Chapter 9
A Tailor from the Past
Sem grabbed his brown waistcoat off the back of the couch in the living room, slipped it on over his shoulders, and buttoned up the three buttons. He opened the front door to the house and stepped out with Ally right behind him.
Ally looked back at the house stepping out on to the front porch to see the lavish exterior, built from fine-cut white and red stone, decorated with white columns at the front and archways spanning each window. Walking further out onto the pathway leading away from the house, she saw the home was surrounded by a large garden of flowers and cherry blossom trees, protected by a tall, decorative wrought iron fence. She could hardly believe such an extraordinary machine dwelled within such a suburban home, as though someone had built the home around the ARC to hide it away from the outside world.
“Follow me,” said Sem, locking the front door and making his way down the red-brick path. Ally followed closely behind him, glad to be outside finally and not cooped up in the messy home. She scanned up and down the street and noticed that Sem’s home differed from the rest on the block. Around it were smaller sized houses, all tightly packed together with no front yards or gardens.
As Ally looked back, she stumbled off the curb onto the uneven road. The streets were laid with cobblestone and packed with traffic of all kinds— everything from horse-drawn carriages, buggies, and cars, both old and new. The taller buildings that lined the street ahead of them all appeared unique in their
own way. Some modern with glass walls and steel roofs, while others appeared far older, featuring Victorian archways and rooftops, or colonial balconies next to gothic architecture. Ally could hardly believe her eyes.
The world before her appeared almost unimaginable. A world flying high above the sky, overflowing with all cultures of the world. As though the boundaries of time had been broken down, creating a world of harmony across the ages. Ally thought to herself that if such a place really existed, then the possible wonders of the afterlife had competition.
Sem continued to make his way down the street, stopping briefly at a crosswalk to let a horse carriage roll by. Ally’s investigation of her new neighborhood stopped abruptly when she ran into the back of Sem’s arm. The driver of the carriage lifted his hat to the two of them with a friendly greeting.
“This place is so . . . random,” said Ally.
“Random? How?” replied Sem.
“Everything.”
“This island is the oldest around, so it’s known as the Alpha District. The first people here made this island their home. Later on, they began to construct the bridges to the others, allowing each group of people their own state or district to live on however they wanted, just like nations. If you visit the other islands, they’re more fashioned to each culture. Alpha is comprised of some of Asphodels oldest families and people who keep close to the ARC, waiting on news of a way home.”
As the traffic passed, Sem tilted his head to Ally. “Come on.”
Ally continued to look around, unable to keep her focus on the sidewalk ahead of her. She bumped into another woman ambling down the sidewalk. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
The woman waved back at her. “No problem.”
The woman replied as she turned and continued to stroll down the sidewalk as her green fifties-style dress and curls swayed from side to side. Ally looked ahead of her again. She watched as Sem passed an older man in an elaborate, Renaissance-style jacket with puffy sleeves and white tights, walking stiff with each stride. Ally stared at the man as he passed, nodding to her.