by A. Sparrow
In my pacing, I stumbled across the trussed up Hashmal, whom everyone seemed to have forgotten about. Remembering my promise, I went over and hacked away at the mess of twine and stickum entangling him. My sword was so dull now it was nearly useless for cutting. Nevertheless I managed to rip through everything but a few strands that he could probably squirm free within the space of an hour once we were gone.
“Bless you,” whispered the Hashmal, who was looking a bit parched and gaunt. “I will make sure that the Lords hear of your mercy.”
A cheer rose up as Georg and Rhino took to the air. I went aft to rejoin my friends. The cracker column lay flat on the deck. Rhino’s wings created a wash and a racket worthy of a helicopter as he descended gently and gripped the column’s sheath with all six legs. The second beetle, guided by Solomon the Frelsian, then took to the air, hovering over the base of the column. It gripped the webbing and lifted the column off the deck. The beetles made a broad banking turn and thundered off toward the bank of clouds, below which Urszula insisted we would find the island of Penult.
Ubaldo and his hornet were already in the air and patrolling a wide arc around us, scanning our general vicinity for threats. The robber fly riders, Karla and Mikal, were next off the boat, and they hurried ahead to catch up with the beetles. Olivier kept putzing around the deck, opening lockers and bins as if he were searching for something. So far he was finding only ropes and tools and such. I was getting nervous that he might discover what I had done to the Hashmal’s bindings.
“Maybe we should go now?” I called out to him.
“You two go on ahead. I’ll catch up,” said Olivier.
I looked over at Urszula.
“We wait,” she said.
I took a deep breath and bit my lip. Olivier ripped open yet another locker and pulled out a harpoon of the sort that the Pennies fired from launchers to bring down bugs. I thought nothing of it, that maybe he planned to use it as his new scepter. But I was aghast to see him stalk around the cage and plunge the weapon through the Hashmal’s ribs as the poor man tried to plead with him. Olivier just jabbed it in, gave a twist and walked. I was horrified by the coldness of his act and how nonchalant he acted coming back to his fly.
He saw me staring at him, and he stared right back. Unflinching. Unapologetic. I knew he had a grudge against Hashmallim and their overlords that went back to his limbless days in the Deeps, but I never knew it was this bitter. He gave us a nod and we took off.
It took me a while to process what had just happened. I felt terrible that my attempt at mercy had been negated, my promise violated. Maybe someday I’d get to apologize to the Hashmal in whatever realm the souls of Pennies moved on to when they left the Liminality. Was it Heaven? The real deal Heaven? The Deeps was more likely, like the rest of us peons.
Ubaldo and his hornet went whizzing by on their way to the front of the formation. We formed a tight little group now, the beetles well surrounded by six escorts. There was no way this column would not reach the shores of Penult now, and I had to say, the thought of deploying it in the homeland of its makers gave me a little shiver of glee.
***
The darkness that closed around us felt more like a security blanket than something to fear. Hour after hour, we cruised along. A headwind had kicked up to stir the sea below. Moonlight frosted the white caps.
As we cruised along, Tigger kept close to Lalibela’s tail. Dragonflies are diurnal creatures. I wonder how the Dusters got them to fly at night. I guess people train dogs to go against their nature and not chase squirrels. Why not get dragonflies to pretend they were moths?
The beetles seemed to have a much easier time of it now that they were sharing the load. It’s not that the columns were heavy but hauling them through the air created lots of drag. So far Rhino was looking strong and fit.
A strange and unexpected calmness came over me. The storm in my head had finally reached a stable equilibrium. The multifactorial stress that had consumed me earlier had dissipated. Whatever happened, happened. Anything bad stuff be tolerated or overcome. If anything good came of this, it would come as a pleasant surprise.
I leaned forward and rested my chin on the forward hump of the saddle, watching the sea swells rise and fall like the breath of a slumbering dragon.
***
Dawn came quick. Too quick. I must have fallen asleep in the saddle—a disconcerting thought considering that we were flying high and I wasn’t strapped in. I grabbed onto the handholds that fringed the saddle and gripped them tight as a wave of vertigo shuddered through me.
Land was now in sight. The island was much larger than I pictured. Its shores stretched out of sight in both directions. A line of clouds, tinged coral and pink by the rising sun, hovered over the central highlands like a misty halo.
Apart from a rim of pale cliffs buttressing the shore, Penult seemed mostly a bunch of rolling meadows punctuated with a few widely-spaced clumps of trees, sort of like a giant golf course. A lacy network of pale roads and paths stretched over and through every hill and hollow. Apart from these, I saw no evidence of civilization—no cities, towns, not even a solitary structure.
Ubaldo was the first to reach land. Blazing far ahead of us on his glorious wasp, we watched him pass over a broad strand of windswept beaches and some low, chalky cliffs, to the first expanse of meadows beyond, touching down beside a road so smooth it glinted in the morning sun.
Karla and Mikal landed next, followed by the rest of us providing close escort to the beetles, whom Georg and Solomon guided down gently to avoid damaging their precious payload. I hopped down off of Tigger onto the spongy grass, glad to have solid ground beneath me again.
“There is nothing here,” said Ubaldo, scowling as if he were angry to have nothing and no one to fight.
“That’s a good thing,” said Olivier. “Gives us time to pick a good target.”
“There are cities, I assure you,” said Urszula.
“Where we are now, is this not one of the places you scouted?”
“No,” she said. “There were no cliffs where we came ashore. Just marshes and lagoons and … a city. A port.”
“Any idea how to get there?”
Urszula shrugged. “It is somewhere on this coast.”
“Obviously.”
“But I cannot tell which direction.”
“Some of us can go and look,” said Mikal. “I volunteer.”
“You go East, Mikal. I will go West,” said Urszula.
“Sounds like a plan,” said Olivier.
Urszula reached down and tightened the cinches of her saddle. She glanced at me over her shoulder. “If we do not come back, do not wait for us.”
“Why wouldn’t you come back?” I said.
“I am just saying.”
“Watch out for those new falcons,” said Olivier. ”Those damned things are nasty quick.”
Urszula returned a wicked smile. “Maybe they should watch out for me.”
Mikal buzzed away on his robber fly. Urszula leaned over, slapped Lalibela’s pronotum and her gleaming dragonfly rocketed off into the sun. The clear membranes spanning the cells of her wings twinkled like diamonds.
Before I could even think to grab a hold of his lead, Tigger zoomed off after them.
***
We unsaddled the bugs that remained, turning them loose to do a little foraging on the beach. I felt a bit nervous about being stranded without Tigger, but Karla offered to let me double up with her if need be. She seemed to enjoy that aspect of my predicament.
When she was preoccupied with stashing gear I went over and discreetly asked Olivier if I could carry the Seraph wings he had just unlashed from the scorpion fly as mine were still attached to Tigger’s saddle. He gave me an odd look, but assented without hesitation.
I bundled them up and tucked them under my arm. They were bulky, but no heavier than an armload of bamboo.
My blunt and blackened sword I slipped under my belt. I wondered why I still bothered to
carry it. The thing was heavy and not very useful as a sword anymore. I could do just as well with a stick. But I couldn’t bring myself to toss it just yet. It had sentimental value going back to the tunnels of Root and my first days in the Liminality. At least I didn’t have to worry about cutting myself on the damned thing.
We concealed our tack and supplies in a shrub-congested gully that carried a rushing freshet down to the cliffs. The water was cool and sweet—a welcome change to the stale lagoon water we carried in our skins.
With a bow and quiver slung over his shoulder and a knotty, club-like scepter at his side, Ubaldo stood and studied the lacework of gleaming white paths that arced and swooped across the lumpy green hills before us. They made me think of nicely healed scars, following the contours of the land without ever disrupting its curves.
He strode up to the nearest path and rapped his scepter on the surface.
“Bone,” he said.
“No way!” I rushed over for a closer look.
Oliver was already there bending down and touching the finely-grained surface. The path was about five meters wide, seamless with an off-white pebbly but porous texture. A gradient of larger pores lined the edges
“Yeah. I have to say,” said Olivier. “Sure looks like bone.”
A whirring, clattering sound developed from somewhere over the next rise. Someone or something was coming down the road. Ubaldo whipped his bow around and strung one of the oversized arrows he had liberated from the ship.
A man appeared, riding a six wheeled scooter that was little more than a platform with wheels, a simple backrest, and two curving flanges that came up from the base and clasped his thighs just above the knee.
He pulled within ten meters of us and rolled to a stop. There was not a speck of fear or aggression in his face, just an open and amiable curiosity. He just remained standing on his device smiling and blinking at us.
“My, you all are looking quite authentic. I’m sorry to disturb you, but … is there to be a performance? I saw nothing in the schedule.”
“Excuse me?” said Olivier.
“You are artists, no? Rehearsing here perhaps?”
“Um. Nope.”
He squinted at us. “Oh my.” A bit of worry crept into his expression. His scooter rolled back slowly away from us without any apparent physical effort on his part, as if it were responsive to the man’s moods.
“You all really are quite convincing. You must be method actors. Your wardrobe. Your whole … demeanor. Nicely done. From which domain are you registered?”
“Domain?”
“We are from the other side,” said Ubaldo.
“Of the island? That would be Bristol, perhaps? Canaan? Aleppo?”
“What is your … domain?” said Olivier.
“Well, Loomis, of course. I’m a local. You … you’re not actually escapees, are you? I have to say, your whole mise-en-scène is quite convincing. Where will you be performing? Or maybe … this is it? This is the performance? I must say, it’s bold of you to count on an audience to find you on their own.”
”He suddenly gasped and cupped his palm over his mouth. “Oh my goodness! That’s … that’s a….“ He stared seaward. Karla’s robber fly was there, hovering just above the cliffs.
Panic gripped the man. “What is this? An incursion?” He swiveled abruptly on his scooter, doing an about face. “Your kind are not allowed here!” An unseen engine clicked and whined as he accelerated back in the direction from whence he had come. Ubaldo raised his bow and aimed it carefully, tracking his progress, leading him just enough.
Olivier shoved the bow aside. “Let him go. Maybe he can lead us back to his nest.”
Chapter 63: Loomis
Ubaldo fished a carved wooden device from the depths of his poncho-like garment, apparently some kind of polyphonic whistle.
“I should call the bugs?” he said.
“Nah. Not just yet,” said Olivier. “Let’s go a little farther on foot. Maybe we can sneak up on this Loomis place.”
“We will need at least one beetle to carry the column,” said Solomon.
“Well go get ‘em. We do what we have to,” said Olivier.
Georg went cliff-side to call Rhino back from the beach where he had gone down to forage with the other bugs. Rhino came flying up dutifully and we strapped the cracker column to his carapace while Georg fed him some of the slop he had salvaged from the cisterns on the boat.
By the time we got going, the man on the scooter was well out of sight but we could still hear him whirring along somewhere over the next rise. Ubaldo walked point as usual with Karla and I right behind him. Olivier, Georg and Solomon followed behind Rhino. A case could be made that our sad little expeditionary force was indeed some sort of avant-garde micro-circus. I sure felt like a clown.
Karla kept offering her hand for me to take. I obliged her only because it was the path of least resistance and I did not want to cause a scene. But I dropped it every time I found a reasonable excuse, tightening the straps on my bundle, scratching my nose, whatever.
I was pretty sure by now that the rift between us would be permanent, though Karla was still all smiley and coy, acting like it was some minor and temporary disturbance. Knowing that my life was ebbing on the other side only made things worse.
I kept gazing back at the shore hoping to see Urszula and Mikal returning, but the sky remained remarkably empty, considering all of the flying contraptions the Pennies had sent with their invasion force.
Rhino never flagged, but his progress was slow. Three legs pivoted at a time, hoisting his body and payload, thrusting them forward. It was kind of like watching NASA transport a rocket booster to a launching pad with one of those ultra-slow tractors. No way would we ever catch up with the scooter guy at this rate, but at least we had a fix on what direction he was going.
We had absolutely no warning of what would reveal itself over the next rise. The landscape was too green to call barren or desolate, but it was certainly under-populated. But when we topped the hill, at first I thought were looking at a mountain, a very jagged and glaciated mountain, full of icy spires and splintered bergs. But there was an order and regularity to the design that told us this was a creation of humans.
The city (or domain) of Loomis was arranged as neatly as a crystal. Layer upon layer of orderly polyhedrons rose in tier from a bedrock base riddled with uniform grottoes carved into the stone. The structures ranged from low-slung villas with little gardens to pale skyscrapers that seemed carved of ice or frosted glass. The tallest had jagged roofs that stabbed at the heavens like sword points. Their shadowed facets were tinged with blue and green highlights, like the seams of an ancient glacier.
A ring of lakes like a moat lie between us and the bulge of hill that held the city proper. Paddocks crammed with strange sheep-like creatures cross-hatched the slope leading down to the lakes. Something about their blunt snouts and big, sad, sentient eyes spooked me. These were not ordinary sheep.
“Jesus! What the heck kind of animals are these?” said Olivier.
“They are not animals,” said Karla.
“God help them if the bugs get wind of them,” said Georg.
“We can set the column right here,” I said. “The quake would probably reach.” I was thinking: get this thing done, get out of here and I could concentrate on fading and what to do about the damned ricin spreading through my body on the other side.
“Nah,” said Olivier. “Let’s get a little closer. I want to take that whole fucking place down like they took down Luthersburg. I want them to have a full swig of their own medicine.”
We came to a branching of pathways and chose the steepest, most direct route to the valley bottom. It led to a causeway across one of the lakes, whose surface was almost flush with the water level. Still, there was no indication of any kind of guard post, defenses or surveillance of any sort. Penult had the markings of a land that had known only peace and order within its borders.
Well, tha
t was all about to change. Olivier rushed ahead, eager as a kid on Christmas morning. Even I was getting pretty excited about setting off the column.
We caught up with Ubaldo and Olivier at the causeway where they had paused to assess the approach to the city. The causeway was seamless and made of the same bone-like material as the roads. The lake was crystal clear revealing a multitude of stripy fish with peach bellies browsing among water weeds.
Several scooters zipped by on one of the roads upslope, but no one seemed to notice us. A couple appeared on the meadow just above us, just strolling along hand in hand. There stares showed more amusement than fear. It all seemed too good to be true.
“We should call the bugs, before we start the quake,” said Georg. “We don’t want to be on the ground when this thing goes off.”
“Your beetle can carry four of us no problem,” said Solomon. “And James has the wings.”
“My wasp will come when I need her,” said Ubaldo, tapping the device around his neck.
“I’m thinking … we should try and get a little closer still,” said Olivier.
“I don’t see why not,” said Ubaldo. “We have yet to be challenged.”
So we started across the causeway. It made me a bit nervous to be so exposed. With nowhere to run but directly forward or back, it would have been the perfect to strike us with their falcons.
A scooter rider stopped to watch us. Another and then another joined him until a small gaggle had accumulated.
Olivier couldn’t stop grinning. “Look at these people! Nobody’s got a clue what we’re all about. I bet we could stroll right up to the city gates.”
“We should set the column here,” I said.
“Soon,” said Olivier. “Let’s just get just a little closer. Up on that road, maybe. It looks pretty important. Well-traveled.”