Penult

by A. Sparrow

  “Life is just a flash.”

  “Maybe so, but we only get one chance at it. Or … two … in some cases. Not that you deserved it. I bring you back and you turn around and can’t wait to throw it all away.”

  “I was scared. I did not want to lose this place. I could not live knowing it was in peril. I just wanted to save the Liminality … for us. But only if you still want there to be an ‘us.’ Do you?”

  I lay still, her arm a dead weight over my torso.

  “Well, do you? Do you still … love me? Do you?”

  When I didn’t respond, she retracted her arm abruptly. And with the loss of her touch, I felt myself slipping over a brink into a dark and empty void. Desperate, I panicked, squirmed around and flailed out my arm. My hand caught her wrist and clasped it tight. I pulled her close.

  Chapter 57: The Scouts Return

  Desperately and without words, Karla and I made love in my nest of twigs and leaves. Engulfed in scents—turpentine, salt spray, the musk of unwashed skin—I lost all sense of self. We may as well have been wafting through the Singularity, our souls all smudged together, blending like smoke.

  Afterwards we lay side by side, my hoodie draped over our bare and dewy skin. A cool breeze lapped at my bare side. Karla nuzzled my neck with her nose and made me shiver.

  This was everything I had wished for and more, yet a weird residue of disappointment and relief lingered. I never should have given in so easily. How would she ever take me seriously going forward?

  But what was done was done. I stared up at the strangely faded stars that wandered the skies of this world. I wondered if they were mere decoration—some sham created for the viewing pleasure of spirits of some higher station. But what if those were real worlds revolving up there, other after-realms for humans or whatever alternative intelligences might exist in this universe? Maybe one of those points of light was Heaven itself. Coming to the Liminality had revealed a few mysteries, only to hint at the existence of a thousand more.

  I had no idea what to do about me and Karla, how we moved on from this reconciliation, if that’s what it was. What had just happened between us had come natural, but it didn’t mean we were back together.

  Things were different now between us. Her leaving had left a taint on our relationship. Our connection would never be as simple and pure as our first days together in Root. It was harder for me now to imagine a future that involved the both of us.

  “There. You happy now?” she asked, as if she were reading my mind. I wasn’t ready to admit to her what I was really thinking.

  “Sure.” The word slipped from my lips like a sigh. It was a white lie.

  “Don’t you fade on me again. We have things left to do. I hope we are not doing this too soon.”

  “What about you? Are you happy?”

  She paused.

  “It takes more than a romp in the sand to improve my mood.”

  “Romp? Is that all this was to you?”

  “Shush! I am just saying. I am joking. You should know better. Happy is not my thing.”

  A blast of wind shook the trees and swirled the bushes. Sand devils danced. Karla snuggled closer. I let my arm slip over her, but it still felt strange holding her, as if she wasn’t really here, but just some figment of a daydream.

  “Do you have any idea what we’re getting into, going to Penult?”

  “No,” she said. “But I am not worried. Not if we have you with us.”

  I sighed. “People expect too much of me sometimes.”

  “All I expect is for you to try. Amazing things happen when you do. I have seen them. In every realm.”

  “Sometimes … I fail.”

  “We all fail. You are only human. You do what you can. That’s all you can do. All we can expect.”

  “What if I do nothing? What if I don’t go to Penult. Would you stop having anything to do with me?”

  “Don’t play games with me,” said Karla. “I know you are committed. You have eyes. You have seen what Penult is doing. I have faith you will do the right thing.”

  “And if I do, you will come back … for good? Stay with me on the other side? No matter what?”

  “Maybe. That is possible. Is that what you wish?”

  I stared at the stars. “I’m not sure anymore.”

  “We fix things here. Make them stop. Maybe then there can be room for some life. We do this first and then we see. Yes?”

  I took a deep breath and sighed. “Okay.” I closed my eyes and shut out the stars.

  ***

  The early morning rays sent the insects preening and sunning themselves high on their perches. A flight of bees came buzzing in to share their nectar with us.

  The word shuttled swiftly through the camp. Yaqob had given his assent. We had waited long enough for the scouts. We would make the crossing without them.

  A work party went off to a spring at the base of a hillock to refill all our flasks and skins with cool, fresh water. Other volunteers made the rounds to saddle their mounts, unpacking various foul smelling slurries and pastes that the Dusters had tucked away in each saddlebag—supplements to boost their energy for the long crossing.

  Karla pecked my cheek and went off to attend to her robber fly. It came zipping down out of the canopy like a faithful dog when she called it. I had to wander the forest a good twenty minutes before I located Tigger high atop a fig tree. He had my spare wings strapped to his side, but my saddle remained on the ground, stacked against a tree with several others.

  I tried coaxing him down with a sheet of pemmican I peeled out of a saddle bag. No matter how much I shrieked and whistled and waved the leathery flap at him, he ignored me, preferring instead to gorge on the turkey-sized aphids crowding the tender, outer branches. I tore off a chunk of pemmican to try myself. It looked much better than it tasted. Sour and putrid, like dried-up vomit, I had to spit it out.

  A damselfly with indigo wings and a purple metallic fuselage came skimming over the treetops bearing a lone rider. It was coming from the wrong direction to be one of the scouts. I recognized the rider. It was the young man from the bog—the nymph whisperer who had summoned Tigger from the depths.

  Olivier came dragging his saddle. “Who the fuck is this?”

  Viktor landed damselfly in the glade and dismounted.

  “Hello! Am I too late to volunteer?”

  “Never,” said Yaqob, who came strolling out of the shrubs, his chest and arms bristling with freshly applied armored scales. “You are welcome.”

  “I am afraid I bear some bad news,” said Viktor. “The second valley has fallen. New Axum is now surrounded on all sides. Zhang is negotiating terms with the Lords of Penult. They have begun evacuations by air.”

  Yaqob looked vexed. “We agreed they should wait for the outcome of the raid. Did we not?”

  “Master Zhang says they have no choice. Reznak dissents. The Old Ones are withholding their judgment for now. Every insect in the bog is being sent to the mountain, but we have not nearly enough wings to bring every refugee to the bog lands by air.”

  “Reznak will set things straight,” said Yaqob.

  Viktor noticed Tigger flitting about the treetops, He beamed.

  “How’s your young mount shaping up?”

  “He’s … uh … got a mind of his own.”

  “My robber fly is extremely well behaved,” said Karla. “Just … not very fast.”

  “Oh, but those robber flies maneuver well in tight quarters,” said Viktor. “They can take a hit too, and keep on flying.” He pulled a fistful of pale, chalky flakes from a sack. “Frog jerky, anyone?”

  Karla accepted a piece, but I decided to stick with the manna for now. Ubaldo climbed atop a dune and stared out across the across the bay. I went up and joined him. There was some action in the sky out over some distant shoals. From this distance, they just looked like a bunch of specks.

  “We’ll have to go north before we turn east,” said Ubaldo. “We stay low, close to the wave
tops. Otherwise they will spot us.”

  Something flashed at ground level and went flying up towards the specks. A rumble followed a few seconds later.

  “Hey, those are … some of those are bugs!”

  “The scouts!” said Ubaldo. “Merde! They are being chased. I see only two. We lost one.”

  Olivier and Yaqob emerged from the forest and hurried up the side of the dune, their faces concerned.

  “Fools!” said Yaqob. “They passed too close to the beach head. They were spotted.”

  The two dragonflies were being followed by a flight of seven falcons, sleeker and quicker than the ones we had tangled with in the valley. These had a single pilot, and instead of talons they had gleaming blades on the tips of their wings. Three condors escorted by several standard falcons followed close on their tail.

  Yaqob exchanged words with Ubaldo in the guttural language of the Deeps.

  “Everyone! Call your flies.”

  Ubaldo shrieked and his hornet immediately took wing. Hurtling over the forest it pounded into the sand beside us, its eyes gleaming, abdomen pulsing, its saddle already in place. Yaqob’s scorpion fly came buzzing down beside it, also already saddled.

  “Keep the beetles grounded,” said Yaqob. “But I want every swift bug in the air.”

  He and Ubaldo swung up onto their mounts, with Ubaldo right behind him. They sprang off the dunes and darted out over the bay, skimming low over the wave tops.

  The scouts had spotted us and altered their course. They remained ahead of their pursuers were steadily losing ground. The new falcons were swifter than anything Penult had in the air previously, and nearly the equal of any bug. They spat out projectiles that left spiral, greenish vapor trails.

  The dragonflies made quick and twitchy adjustments to their flight path to evade the objects coming at them from behind. The bulge of their compound eyes gave them, in effect, eyes in the back of their head.

  Volunteers variously screeched and clapped and whistled for their beasts. The canopy bounced and swarmed with bugs sorting themselves out and seeking their riders. I attempted to mimic how Ubaldo had called Tigger the other day, but my voice cracked before I get out a decent screech and I was reduced to a fit of coughing.

  Karla’s robber fly came buzzing down into the glade and she leapt on its back, wielding a scepter like a knobby wooden baton. Her fly had no saddle.

  “You’re riding bareback?”

  “There is no time!” she said, her eyes anxious. “Where is your bug?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He was just up there.”

  I screamed again for Tigger. My shriek was a little more convincing this time, but it still got me nowhere. I gazed up hopefully at the dragonflies flitting back and forth overhead but none bore Tigger’s distinctive broad striping.

  In quick succession, one volunteer after another alighted from the dunes until half a dozen were winging out after Yaqob and Ubaldo.

  “Enough,” said Karla, and she too took to the air, followed by several more stragglers.

  “We’re heading into the trees to get the beetles tethered,” said Olivier. “They’re not equipped for aerial dog fights.”

  “I’ll stick around here,” I said. “Maybe Tigger will show.”

  I was the last dragonfly rider left on the dunes. When the last of the robber flies took off, I was alone, feeling useless and impotent. I couldn’t even strap on a pair of Seraph wings. Tigger still had them lashed to his side.

  I kicked my way through the light, fluffy sand to the crest of the tallest dune and watched as the volunteers closed on the first wave of attackers. Behind them, an array of old-style falcons escorted a pair of huge, lumbering condors carrying something large and bulky in their talons.

  Ubaldo’s hornet raced into the lead, accelerating past the scouts. He homed in in on the lead falcon, weaving erratically to avoid the barrage of bolts emanating from the bristling nose of the enemy craft. His hornet swung its abdomen stinger first and pierced the Hashmal pilot through his cage. All six wings instantly ceased and the craft went tumbling into the surf. Yaqob came zooming up behind him, his scorpion fly flailing its spiked tail, raking and slashing at the other falcons. Pieces flew off and another falcon went crashing into the sea.

  The volunteers caught up just as the second wave hit, firing a massive barrage of ballista bolts, some of which found their mark. A robber fly spun away from the formation, its wing damaged, spiraling down to the water. It made its way back over the shoals, staying just above the waves until it crumpled onto the beach, spilling its rider in the sand.

  I ran down the dune towards the beach, fearing it was Karla who had fallen. But it was a guy, some Duster fellow I didn’t know. He rose from the sand and tried taking a step, but couldn’t put any weight on it. He fell back down and just sat there, staring at his robber fly which was just as battered, its wings torn, thorax pierced with bolts.

  I rushed down to help him. His foot jutted at an odd angle from the rest of his leg. He had badly broken his ankle.

  “You okay? Is it just your leg?”

  He nodded, grimacing. I helped him up and over the dunes and got him tucked away under the trees.

  The battle in the sky had drifted closer to shore. A wild dogfight was underway, flies and falcons dodging, diving, firing bolts, exchanging bursts of plasma. A cluster of falcons harried Ubaldo like nesting sparrows chasing a crow, but few bolts struck the shifty hornet.

  Yaqob’s scorpion fly fought like a winged demon, whirling and slashing at any falcon that came within reach. Several falcons had already begun to retreat back to the beach head, their cages shattered, six wings reduced to four or five.

  Amidst the chaos, I noted a set of striped wings on a rider-less dragonfly. Tigger was up there battling without me.

  I noticed the cracker columns sitting out into the open on the forest side of the dunes. Someone had hauled them out to make it easier for the beetles to pick them up. The Pennies were bound to spot them. I didn’t care about the copies, but the real one had to be protected.

  I ran back out onto the dunes and peeked under the shroud of each column, looking for the real one. Olivier’s was easy to spot. It was crudely carved with grooves too shallow, bumps too rounded. But the other two were practically indistinguishable. I grabbed the lines securing each or their shrouds and dragged them towards the underbrush. They weren’t heavy at all, just bulky.

  A condor hovering over the shoals fired a blast from the device dangling from its talons. A fiery orange blob came thundering into the side of a dragonfly, tearing it in half and unsaddling its rider who went plummeting into the drink.

  Distracted, I tripped over some driftwood and went chin first into the sand. But I kept on going, hauling the columns the rest of the way on my hands and knees. Once I got beyond the first line of trees, I ripped some branches off some saplings and arranged them to conceal the columns as best I could.

  I went back out onto the dunes. The sky directly above me was now a chaos of darting bugs and falcons. Ballista bolts and plasma bursts flew every which way. I saw another Duster fall from a dragonfly, her long grey hair trailing like a streamer. Her dragonfly continued to fight, slashing at a falcon with its claws. I held out my sword, searching for that willful feeling in my middle, but things were so confused overhead, I held back. I feared hitting one of our own.

  A condor landed on the beach, not downed but rather executing a hard, but intentional landing. Viktor on his damselfly, swooped down to harass the armored Hashmallim who poured out of its cages. He engaged them with bursts of his scepter, nimbly dodging the bolts they shot back his way.

  I retreated back into the trees as the Hashmallin ran up and over the dunes, heading straight for the column I had left behind. I watched them bash it to bits with their heavy staffs. They were welcome to whack away at Olivier’s replica all they wanted. I stood ready to defend the real thing with my blackened and blunted, but still potent sword.

  One of the H
ashmallim spotted me lurking in the trees. Before he could do anything, I leveled my sword at him and let loose a blast. I had no inhibitions today. A tight little baseball-sized wad of supersonic energy struck his side and slammed him down. His staff went flying. The Hashmal I had hit writhed a bit and then went still.

  Emboldened, I came out of the trees. The other Hashmallim brandished their staffs at me, grasping them by the middle. The staffs flattened and curved into bows. They peeled perfectly formed arrows from the bodies of the bows and strung them on what seemed to be invisible bowstrings.

  As they raised their newly conjured bows, my sword shuddered. A blast ripped out of the tip and flared out wide, striking both Hashmallin with one hit, crumbling their bows, stripping off their armor and vaporizing their arrows.

  They looked at me with some astonishment before turning and running back towards the condor, abandoning their fallen comrade in the sand.

  The condor pilot witnessed all of it was already preparing to flee. He raised his wings and turned the craft to face the wind while the fleeing Hashmallin sprinted across the beach and clambered aboard.

  I stalked after them, stretching my sword out at the condor just as it lifted off and turned out over the ocean. It was still gaining altitude when another blast thundered out of my sword tip. This emission, wider and more diffuse, caught the condor, shredded its membranes and splintered its frame. The condor collapsed in on itself and crashed into the surf.

  I looked up and found the sky still full of bugs. Five of the sleeker falcons remained engaged in battle but the other surviving craft were retreated south down the shore.

  A volunteer on a robber fly took down a falcon with a burst from a scepter that gummed up its wings and stuck them together. Tigger zoomed down to give it a bump for good measure before it crashed into the trees, unable to recover from a steep dive.

  Ubaldo’s hornet was a killing machine, systematically destroying each falcon it encountered, latching on and stinging each pilot through the cockpit cage. Wings would go slack, the hornet would release, and falcons would drop, limp wings trailing like the feathers of a shuttlecock as they crunched onto the beach or splashed into the surf.