by Beth Goobie
Flux
Flux
BETH GOOBIE
Text copyright © 2004 Beth Goobie
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be
invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data:
Goobie, Beth, 1959–
Flux / Beth Goobie.
ISBN 1-55143-314-1
I. Title.
PS8563.O8326F58 2004 jC813’.54 C2004-901023-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004101754
Summary: Deep in another reality, while using her ability to travel to parallel worlds,
Nellie uncovers a conspiracy to abduct children for an experimental laboratory.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support of its
publishing program provided by the following agencies:
the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts,
and the British Columbia Arts Council.
The author very gratefully acknowledges the
Canada Council for the Arts grant that funded the writing of this book.
Design by Lynn O’Rourke
Cover Images: www.eyewire.com
Printed and bound in Canada
Orca Book Publishers
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Victoria, BC Canada
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Orca Book Publishers
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08 07 06 05 04 • 6 5 4 3 2 1
Quote from LUH, Man’s Cosmic Game,
published by Edizioni Noesis, © Giuliana Conforto.
www.giulianaconforto.it
Used with permission. All rights reserved.
for Melanie
Memory is a goddess because
it is our sense of identity:
if we couldn’t remember our past
we wouldn’t say ‘I’.
—Giuliana Conforto
LUH: Man’s Cosmic Game
Part 1
Chapter 1
IT WAS DUSK, the stars beginning to show, a low song along the horizon. The first moon had appeared and among the doog-den trees the breeze was growing sleepy, a wickawoo bird giving out its last cry of the day. Shadows dreamed themselves across the landscape, taking it deep into sepia and pewter gray. In the still heavy air only the doogden leaves seemed awake, like those parts of the mind that wait on the edge of things, whispering as the body slides toward sleep. Suddenly a snapping of twigs erupted along the treeline, followed by a loud grunt as a twelve-year-old girl came careening down the steep slope of a nearby hill and landed in a withered dengleberry bush, her body clenched, absorbing the shock of impact.
Slowly Nellie uncurled, each movement a stifled groan. Thin electric lines pierced her lungs, she’d been running for over an hour since she was spotted coming out of a corner store on Borovan Avenue. Nothing had distracted her pursuers, not even a pack of cigarettes dropped early in the chase—the Skulls had merely scooped them up and come after her, their bodies streamlined for tracking as they ducked through the late afternoon crowd. Now she was in the warehouse district, a haphazard collection of concrete buildings that had sprung up on the northern edge of the city. In the two years since she’d fled the Interior with her mother, Nellie had learned that everything about the Outbacks was haphazard, a scornfully discarded handful of chaos for which the Interior had no use. At least, not officially. During the time she’d lived in the city of Dorniver, she’d seen the slick gray vehicles that identified the Interior Police less than ten times. The first had directly preceded her mother’s disappearance, the rest had clustered in the following weeks, tapering off within two months.
A hoot from the hill alerted her. Starting to her feet Nellie watched a boy peak the crest, followed by three more. Huddled briefly, their dark outlines conferred, then took a simultaneous slide down the steep slope, braced for the five-foot drop at the bottom. Whirling, Nellie took off along the outside of the nearest warehouse. Beyond it lay a network of dirt-packed roads and warehouses that had closed down for the night, but perhaps she could find a place to hide, or a door someone had been stupid enough to leave unlocked. Heading home wasn’t an option, not until the Skulls left off tracking her. No way was she leading them to the only place that held the quiet beating of her heart, her one true sanctuary.
Grunts punctured the air as the Skulls hit ground. Increasing her pace, Nellie veered around the end of the warehouse and collided with a chain-link fence that enclosed a large loading area. Beyond this she could see the next warehouse, completely fenced in, and beyond that a dirt road and an open field. Wherever she looked, the evening sky poured down a long brown-gray emptiness. With nowhere to hide, the Skulls would tackle her before she was halfway across the field. There was nothing to do but climb or turn back. Quickly she swung herself up the fence, the moonlit mesh clattering against the metal posts, a heart gone wild, tearing at itself. Perched on the top rail, she was about to start down the other side when a low snarl rushed across the yard and a sleek black dog launched itself toward her, its legs swimming air. At the same moment the Skulls skidded to a halt outside the fence, their mouths hanging loose as they stared upward.
Twisting itself into a frenzy, the dog shifted its attention to the Skulls. Momentarily forgotten, Nellie studied the animal’s growling contortions and a slow grin eased her scowl. With those teeth tearing at the mesh the boys wouldn’t be able to climb the fence, they couldn’t even touch it. Swaying high above the ground each time the dog launched itself, she pondered her options. For one succinct raw-breathing moment, she was safe. Beside her the warehouse wall rose ten feet above her head, but the opposite side of the building appeared to be lower. If she crawled along the top of the fence, she might be able to access the warehouse roof from the other end and wait the dog out there until it was penned at daylight.
Straddling the fence she dug her feet into the mesh and began inching forward, the dog keeping pace underneath. “Get something,” yelled a voice. “A long board.” It was Deller, leader of the Skulls, and the rest of the gang faded obediently into the sepia dusk. Quieter now, the dog paced and panted, watching the boy who stood silently staring upward. Ahead of Nellie the fence stretched so taut it was like crawling her own panic, but she thought she could make it through anything the Skulls might throw in their attempts to knock her down. What else could they do? No one could get at her directly with the dog so intent on keeping them at bay. If she got out of tonight’s mess in one piece, she was going to return sometime soon with a raw steak and fling it over the fence as thanks.
The boys reappeared, dragging a large tree branch, and levered it up against the mesh.
“Not there,” hissed Deller. “Ahead of her. Where she’ going.”
Clinging to her perch, Nellie absorbed the shock as the heavy branch hit the fence a second time and Deller shimmied its full height, well out of the dog’s reach. Crouched and grinning, he faced her. Fourteen, wiry and strong, he was tuned to every pulse of his body. Violence sang in his blood, sky met earth, and he was a lone dark figure dancing at their center point. At the base of the fence the dog went manic, vaulting itself upward, spiraling into a high-pitched whine. Leaning down, Deller teased it with a dangling hand.
“Gotcha, Bunny,” he sneered.
They’d never trapped her like this before—alone, way out nowhere. In back alleys, Dorniver’s crowded streets, there had always been some adult—not her own mother perhaps, but someone who’d come sharp-e
yed and yelling to her rescue, providing the few seconds she’d needed, the frantic escape-line of heartbeats that had mapped her way home.
“Just come on down,” Deller said softly, “and we’ll go easy on you.”
Praying her worn runners wouldn’t slip, Nellie brought her right foot to the top rail and sprang, angling her shoulder so it would knock Deller into the enclosed area and deflect her own body outward. But as she leapt so did the dog, and the force of its body against the fence sent both girl and boy tumbling over the opposite side. Grabbing Deller’s shoulder, Nellie hung on as his fingers clutched and slid the length of the mesh. They landed, Nellie on top, Deller taking the full force of their fall, the fence belling out as the dog threw itself at them in another savage rush. As she clambered to her feet, Nellie saw Deller’s hand still clinging to the fence, the dog’s muzzle rushing to meet it. Turning, she exploded through the shocked Skulls as an eerie scream rose behind her, slippery and lonely as moonlight.
At the bottom of the hill she glanced back to see the Skulls crowded around Deller’s writhing body. Just beyond them the dog continued to throw itself at the fence like a heartbeat, sending the wire mesh into long clattering waves around the yard. Then she was in among the doogden trees where the air breathed differently, a breeze slipped like forgetfulness down the back of her sweating neck, and she could fade between the quiet coppery trunks, their sighing cobweb of leaves so delicate one might have thought their sadness nothing at all.
IN THE ONE-ROOM SHACK, Nellie lit a black candle and prepared to remember the dead. Carefully she covered the only window with a gauzy material she’d chosen for remembering purposes because she liked the soft wings it formed on a breeze. The material floated, a haze of purples and greens, its lower edge brushing an upended crate that held a margarine container and the black burning candle. Night came early to the shack’s interior. Although it had originally been built in an open area, small trees and foliage had grown up around it, so dense the crumbling structure could no longer be seen, even from a few feet. No path led to it and Nellie made sure she never defined a trail, working her way through the surrounding bush by alternate routes. Often she crawled tree to tree, feeling her way along the strongest branches. She’d even created a hidden passage to the shack’s front door by forcing a crawl space several feet in length that began midway through the dense foliage. Soon after moving in, she’d nailed some rusty screening over the window and covered the dirt floor with blankets in a vain attempt to keep back the bugs. Her single other home renovation was a piece of rope which she used to tie shut the ill-fitting door, closing herself into a small private space that tilted in the gusting candlelight, taking greedy leaps into the unknown.
Pushing aside several tea towels that were piled in a corner, Nellie lifted a folded gold-brocaded cloth that had been stored underneath. It was a slow, awed gesture, her eyes solemn and tranced, as she let the cloth fall into a loose swinging dress. In the small shadowy room the brocade flickered, veined with light and whispering with angel voices. The dress had instantly been hers the moment she’d first seen it floating on a laundry line, shining white and gold, pure as mother love, and she wore it only on those extra special, holy occasions when she sent herself out in search of the minds of the dead.
Peeling out of her grimy T-shirt and shorts, Nellie kicked off her runners and stood naked, the dress clasped to her small breasts as she watched the candle flame weave in and out of itself. Sometimes the light seemed weary, as if an unseen weight pressed upon it. At other times a wicked energy rose through the candle stub and she danced naked in the tilting light, grunting as flux entered the shack and everything that was known undid itself. Before moving into the shack she’d never experienced flux, hadn’t been aware it existed. Since she knew of no one to ask about these experiences, she’d decided they were a gift sent by the Goddess Ivana, moments in which Her divine mind touched directly upon the material world, causing a quirk in the molecular field. Then Nellie’s surroundings would shapeshift, the air suddenly filling with smoke, quick-twisting forms and the call of drums. At other times there would be only her body taking strange wild forms, and she would dance until exhaustion dropped her panting to the ground, her face wet with tears she didn’t understand.
If only, she thought, stroking the gold-brocaded dress, she could shapeshift at will and didn’t have to wait for the Goddess to send some flux. Sometime soon she was going to have to learn the proper incantation to grab Ivana’s attention good and hard, and make Her listen. Slowly Nellie pulled the dress over her head, the sensation of the heavy cloth shivering deep into her skin, then knelt and spread the skirt into a glowing circle. Folding her hands in her lap, she focused on the question of candlelight that lit the small shack and whispered the beginning words.
“Blessed Ivana, come to me.” One afternoon about a year ago, she’d slipped into a small church on a Dorniver street corner and seen a clutch of old women rocking in the pews, mumbling similar words. Now as she chanted the memory came back to her, heavy and weighted like sleep. “Blessed Ivana, come to me,” she repeated, the words taking the shape of something lonely—dark doves flying from the mouths of old women stinking of garlic and missing teeth. “Blessed Ivana,” Nellie whispered, twisting her lips into old women’s lips. Her own mother’s name had been Lydia but no matter, the Goddess Ivana was everyone’s mother and all missing mothers returned to touch their children through Her. “Blessed Ivana, blessed Ivana,” Nellie chanted, her eyes squeezed tight, and suddenly her brain pivoted on its axis, the shadowy shack took a crazy tilt to the left, and it happened—a hand appeared, reaching through a long darkness toward the candlelight. Gently the palm pressed itself against her hot forehead. Pale fingers stroked her cheeks and touched her wailing mouth.
“My child,” a voice whispered and it was her mother’s voice, Nellie’s own mother named Lydia, the mother who’d disappeared sixteen aching months ago, her voice deep with the echoes of what could not be understood. Then the hand withdrew, retreating into the long darkness. Lunging after it, Nellie knocked over the crate. The candle toppled, hissing out, and the gate to the mother-world disappeared, leaving a twelve-year-old girl collapsed in a gold-brocaded remembering dress beneath the sighs of a floating gauze curtain.
Chapter 2
NELLIE WOKED LATE, to a dull pain that throbbed at the base of her brain. Shifting and muttering in her nest of dirty blankets, she hovered between sleeping and waking, letting her eyelids drift repeatedly open, then closed. Sometimes the morning sludge in her head was a gutter thick with mud, and there was no one to help pull her out of her dreams— no nagging mother knocking at a bedroom door, no bus driver waiting at a corner stop, no schoolteacher summoning up a 9:00 a.m. smile as her students walked into the room. The grimmest and most basic fact of Nellie’s life was the first to attack her every morning—if she decided to lie without moving until breath left her and her body rotted into the shack’s crumbling floor, no one would notice. Each day she came awake daydreaming about the pleasures of dying, of slipping gradually backward into the comforting world of the dead where she wouldn’t have to try anymore, could simply accept the way things had gone and let everything rest as it was. No more endlessly trying to make things come together again, trying to make sense of what could not be understood. And no more endlessly hungry belly, with the deeper emptiness that threatened beyond it.
Outside the shack, a flock of squawking wickawoos descended into the foliage and prepared to do battle over a patch of dengle-berries. Grunting irritably, Nellie rolled over and focused on the window. The sagging rectangle of light was a dim haze of purples and greens that swelled gently on the incoming breeze. With a start she realized she’d forgotten to take down the gauze curtain after last night’s remembering session and came fully awake, riding the thundering of her heart. This was blasphemy, a major trespass against the Goddess who treasured any ritual object used to invoke Her presence. Ivana’s tokens were sacred, set aside for divine purpose
s, and couldn’t be left lying about. What if She’d noticed the holy veil floating carelessly in the morning light while Her twelve-year-old devotee slept? What if She took offence and decided to never again bless the shack with Her presence?
Quickly Nellie sat up, intending to return the gauze curtain to its customary hiding place under the stack of tea towels with the gold-brocaded dress. But as she pushed herself upright, the shack spun into a dizzy ooze, forcing her to drop back onto her pad of blankets. For a long moment her mind rippled and whirled, and then it opened onto a great humming darkness full of stars that shifted in and out of mysterious complex alignments. The stars glowed in a wealth of unfamiliar colors, and they seemed to be calling to one another in shrill piercing voices. The sound was unearthly, surrounding and resonating through Nellie’s body until she felt as if the physical world was about to dissolve into one vast singing wave.
Gradually the vision faded from her head and she opened her eyes with a cautious whimper. This wasn’t the first time she’d woken, still carrying intense dreams of stars in flux, nor was it the first time she’d felt those dreams shuffle her physical reality like a deck of cards. Sometimes the stars seemed to transport her to unfamiliar places, and she would open her eyes to find herself in a room with arcing white walls, a tropical garden, or a mechanical cubicle with sleepy blinking lights. At such times she would hold on desperately with her mind, trying to imprint what she saw into memory, but the images remained only for a heartbeat, then faded. Still, Nellie couldn’t convince herself they were mere fantasy. The places seemed more real, more solid than the dilapidated shack she called home— as if they held more of her, were keeping the most important part of herself just beyond reach. Was that what a soul was? she wondered. A part of you that lived somewhere else? Lifting a hand to the dim window light, she was relieved to see it was human. Her dreams cast her in such weird forms—batlike, reptilian, or furred like a bear—and sometimes she seemed to be made of light, changing shape as easily as thought.