“I hear you.”
“All right. So come on. Turn this car around, Phister. I’ve got about three hours left, tops, and I don’t think you’ve got much more.”
But now, truthfully, Young Phister was no longer able to hear the dead boy. And because he could no longer see where he was going either, he was forced to slow the car down to a crawl. But he did not turn the car around.
The last dim thought Young Phister had was that he had never introduced himself to the dead boy, so how did the dead boy know his name? But when his old name was repeated for a third time, he turned slowly, very slowly, to face the tiny passenger, who was still shaking him by the arm. He whispered, “Let go of me. I don’t know anybody by that name.”
DEIDRE, BEYOND
Variation on a recurring dream: caterpillars of several large species covering her, mostly those of moths. Writhing slowly over her legs, arms, belly, and chest. Tangled, struggling in her hair. They touched every conceivable place of her body except for her mouth, nose, and half-closed eyes. Larval insects surrounded her absolutely. Sometimes they were of glossy black scarabs, or blues and skippers and delicate fritillaries. Arachnids, even (though these were not truly insects).
Tiny, suctioned legs puckered, plucking at her skin. The rasp of mouthpieces grazed her flesh.
Under cover of the slowly seething mass, she was as naked as the day she’d been born. She smiled.
Actually, Deidre had never seen live caterpillars before. Not while awake. Only pictures of them, in illustrated printouts; Sam created all moths directly in their adult phase. So it was with great interest that she studied these dream-caterpillars. The majority of them — ranging vastly in size and colour, from pale greenish to a dull brown, some hairy, some with eyespots on the abdomen and, in a few cases, with tiny, erect tails quivering on the last segment — looked exactly like those in her pictures.
The moderately unpleasant sensation of caterpillars upon her flesh, when compared to the horrid emotions she’d experienced in the dreams preceding this one, were relatively benign. In other, nastier dreams, there had been blood, pain, and death.
A shudder passed through her.
Soon she would wake up. The carpet of caterpillars would vanish; the suns would come on; her beloved kin would be together, in Elegia. Like they were after any nightmare.
The first thing she would do upon waking would be embrace her father — who had surely just rushed into her bedchamber, after hearing her cries — and, maybe at breakfast, she would take the time to go around the table and kiss each of her sisters on the cheek, even if Miranda protested the unwarranted embrace and the older two scoffed and tried to turn away.
Imagining this in the dream, Deidre smiled again. Honestly, how could she have ever believed that the Orchard Keeper would send his family into exile? Or that a hole in the roof could open? That she alone, of all people, would be carried up out of it? By an angel, no less!
Absurd.
To blame for this disturbing series must have been the spicy stew Lady had prepared for dinner, and the reason for this particular sequence was that she had asked Sam about making Lunas, and the larger Sphinxes, and had thought, just before the gram’s strange appearance, about metamorphic cycles. For everything there is a reason. Action, and reaction. Cause and effect.
Memories of her cozy canopy bed gave her the assurance she needed to wait patiently for this intrusion of caterpillars to filter out of her mind. After all, dreams cannot hurt you.
Then a voice, quite like her father’s, said something she did not catch.
“Pardon me?” Deidre’s own words did not come out as clearly as she would have liked; more like a moan than anything intelligible; she felt her dry lips move.
“You’re conscious. Good. And you can hear me? You understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Deidre said, twitching, because the caterpillar nuzzling her left nipple had begun to do something almost painful. Goodness, her mouth was very dry. “Is there a war coming, father? Please, is there another war coming?”
“Um.” After a long moment — Deidre might have slipped back into sleep, if she was ever awake — the voice said, “I’m afraid I’m not your father . . . But I got the language right, and on the second attempt. Pretty good, eh? Of all the ancient tongues!”
Deidre was growing confused. But her smile slowly returned. This was more dream nonsense. Soon she would be awake for real. There would be sense and order. She felt herself rising up, right now, toward sanity, toward morning, toward her diurnal life and family. Again, this certainty gave her the confidence and ability to playfully indulge the dream voice. “If you’re not my dad,” she said, “then who are you?”
“That isn’t important. An amalgam, a custodian. What’s your name?”
“Deidre.”
“That’s a pretty name, Deidre. Exotic. Ancient. Listen, Deidre, I want to stress something to you. You’re going to be all right.”
“I know. I’m waking up.” She licked her lips but her tongue caught on the hot skin.
“Yes. That’s true . . . Though you were wounded in the retrieval operation. My little friends have almost finished their job. No permanent damage. And, like you said, you’re almost awake. I’m most relieved.”
Deidre became slightly concerned by these comments; the voice had referred to her being wounded, which had occurred in the exceedingly horrid first dream, the dream of angels, of Mingh straw’s death.
Now the unpleasantness of what the larvae were doing to her became harder to ignore. She squirmed. Pinch yourself, Deidre thought, but the masses of caterpillars weighed down heavily upon her arms. Now the pain at her shoulder — where the angel’s talons had gripped — was tremendous.
A scream bubbled up through her and she let it out — “Eeeeeeeaghhhh . . .” — trying to thrash, to kick out.
“Calm down, Deidre, please! Calm down!”
She lay panting. Above her was a pale, lit ceiling.
“I’m dismissing them,” the voice said, “it’s all right, Deidre, you’re going to be all right. They’ve done their job, it’s over. Don’t freak out.”
Deidre had built up strength in her lungs to scream again but the larvae were on the move, leaving her flesh, marching off her body and onto the surrounding mattress. So she just drew a deep, shuddering breath.
This place was not her room. Here was no canopy bed.
She managed to sit up partially, propped on her elbows, watching in horrified fascination as the numerous creatures — still very much there, real, and alive — reached the rim of the platform she had been lying flat on and, with gentle plops, fell into numerous holes spaced around the perimeter.
She looked around. The room was small. That pale ceiling, just a few metres overhead. White, almost shimmering walls. A closed door to her left, no knob, an odd symbol embossed upon it.
Next to her hummed a delicate machine. Quivering, on an equally delicate stand. She regarded this device with growing fear; her father had a similar one in his private lab, where he sometimes tinkered and repaired staff. It was a gadget meant to keep the body alive and functioning while he operated, opening them up and poking around inside. Several attachments, resting in cradles or clips on the side. A cable, leading out of sight, reappearing to snake up over the platform, coil over her left leg, up her belly —
She yanked the cable away and when she touched the painful area above her ear where it had been taped, she felt warm liquid trickling. A patch, shaved on her head.
She whispered, “What have you done to me?”
And the spindly machine said, almost as quietly, “Not yet, girl, not yet. Now you’ve done it, silly.”
There was no one else in the room. She looked at the wound in her shoulder. Where it should have been, the skin was covered by a light dusting of whitish fuzz. Her instinct was to rub the fuzz away but she shied from the agony that would most likely ensue. She did not want to confirm that she had been hurt. That would make it all real.<
br />
The caterpillars were gone.
Lifting her face, she detected an absence of smell in the air. This was the most unsettling thing so far. She filled her lungs with cleanliness and sterility and understood, without a doubt, that she had left the world and all she had known behind.
The dreams had been real.
Angels brought her to this place.
“Where am I?” she asked, horrified.
“A seed terminal.” The disembodied voice came from all around, as if from the clean air itself. “But please, don’t panic again. It’s no good for either of us.”
Initially, upon waking, Deidre had pictured a man speaking, but now, she realized, she was picturing a woman. Did the voice emanate from some form of free-floating gram? There appeared no light source to support this idea. And even if a drifting gram were possible, a beam of light would be needed to keep it going. So who or what was talking? A ghost? “What is a seed terminal?”
“Not just any seed terminal! The seed terminal! Mine. I’m the one lucky enough to host you. All the others are fading away, right now, as we speak. Across the planet. All those little versions of myself, sad and disappointed, shrivelling up inside.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Not too long, Deidre. A few hours. Those little worms are very efficient. Now, you need to get your strength up. You’ll be leaving shortly.”
Deidre said, “They’re not worms. They’re moth larvae.”
“Moth larvae? Is that what they were? I’ll have to take your word for it. I don’t know much about these things.”
She swung her legs off the bed, trying to ignore the pain that jolted up to her shoulder. Since the source of the voice and the tones it spoke in did not remain constant, all she could be sure of was that whatever spoke was invisible, intangible.
“Are you sure you feel well enough to get out of bed?”
“I’m leaving. Right now.”
“Leaving? Ah, leaving . . . I see. Well, that might not be so simple. Nor is it advisable. Even if you could leave . . . Deidre, there’s no place for you to go.”
“I’m going home.” But attempting to take a step, Deidre discovered she could not lift her tingling feet and that her knees were too weak to hold her weight. Grasping the edge of the platform, buttocks resting on it, she said, through gritted teeth, “What were those larvae doing to me anyhow? Working on my wounds?”
“Yes. Very astute, child. Very. But please, if you insist on moving about, let me assist. At least, let me help you into the courtyard.”
The door before her slid open silently, letting in an organic yellow glow that fell over her, covering her body from head to toe with warmth. Subtly hinted scents also entered with it; she breathed them in, making her feel somewhat less tense. Blinking (and sneezing, which hurt like heck!), she did manage a faltering step.
Out there — if she could trust her senses — was a garden. She saw thin columns of light, moving through what looked like branches, and real leaves that winked in at her lasciviously.
“Where are my clothes?”
“They had to be cut away, Deidre.”
“Then give me something else to wear.”
“There’s no one here to see you. There is no need for clothes.”
“I want clothes.”
“I might be able to conjure up a robe, I guess. I have very limited matter to work with.”
“Do it.”
To retain the momentum of her decision to get up, she took a step, and another, breathing in sharply with each movement, walking forward gingerly until she had reached the doorway. Pausing, one hand on the smooth jamb, glancing about for any creatures that might be watching or hunting her, she saw that she was, indeed, at the threshold to a garden.
A path led between lush growths either side, ending at a nearby fountain, whose sparkling waters caught the light and chattered at her softly, as if laughing at her concern. The lawns were clipped, the bushes and trees all around well maintained. Her father would have been proud. In fact, this quiet place was so much like the gardens of Elegia that Deidre harboured a momentary hope she might actually be home, or that she might yet wake up from this final dream, but when she looked skyward and could not see the familiar suns, suspended from their cradles, nor the sky they hung from, her hopes were dashed.
Instead, overhead, a single reddish orb glared down at her, set against a pale cerulean that appeared infinite, with no visible walls or boundaries . . .
She looked away. Afterimages, burned onto her retinas, eventually faded from her vision. What she had also seen, just above the treetops, was unmistakably a shimmering barrier.
She was in a cage.
That voice, almost whispering in her ear now, said, “Do you like it, Deidre? We made this just for you.”
“I do not,” Deidre said. And then, because she could not help herself, “I want my mom. And I want to see my dad. He’s an Orchard Keeper, you know. He can have your head on a platter, so you’d better arrange for me to go home. You better let me go. You’d better.”
“Deidre, that isn’t possible. Your biological, uh, parents, they remain inside.”
“Inside? Inside what? Where are they?” Through the trees she saw two of the horrid angels now, flying high beyond the barrier, and she cowered. “Can they get in?”
“Who? Your mother and father? No, they . . . Oh, I see. Those creatures. No. They can’t get in. You’re safe here. And Deidre, I want to make this very clear. It was never our intention to harm you. The creatures were instructed to go in and retrieve you with no injuries whatsoever.”
“They are monsters.”
“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Deidre. They were all we had to work with. But you’re here now, you’re healthy, and you’re perfect. That’s all that counts.”
“I’ve been kidnapped. I’m in a cage.”
“No. The seed terminal is not a cage. It’s here to protect you. It’s large enough to roam around in freely. I’m sure the accommodations will meet your approval. Conditions outside are arid and hot, to say the least. All the provisions you’ll ever want are in here. The water in the fountain is real, enriched, filtered. There is food, produced by a cabinet behind the bed . . .
“We have two days to kill, Deidre. All I ask in the interim is that you stay calm and hear me out. Will you do that? Please?”
“You really expect me to stay here for two days? With you? You’re crazy.” But the warmth of the odd red sun — if that single orb overhead could be considered a sun — made Deidre feel drowsy. And her feet throbbed. So she set off, hobbling down the path towards the fountain. A bench was shadowed there, under overhanging leaves. “All right, voice,” she said, “here’s your chance. Tell me why I’m here.”
“You were hurt, Deidre.”
“I know that! But why?” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “Anyhow, it was you that hurt me!”
“Not me, Deidre. Them. The locals. The monsters, as you called them.”
“They work for you. You said that. Therefore you’re responsible.”
“We had to get you out. The operation was a success.”
“What’s become of Elegia? My family?”
“Everything you refer to still exists. There is trouble there, I’ll grant you that. Trouble we didn’t count on, but for now everything exists.”
Deidre had reached the bench. Exhausted, she sat down carefully, feeling immediate relief. She closed her eyes briefly, then stood again to plunge both hands into the cold water, letting it run through her fingers and splash deliciously up her arms for a moment before bringing her hands to her face and wetting her skin. She drank deeply from her cupped palms and sat back down, dripping from her chin and hair and cheeks and feeling another fraction of a degree better.
“I’m still leaving,” she said. “I’ll sit for a while, get a little stronger, but I am getting out of this cage. Have you found anything for me to wear yet?”
“I’m working on it.”
<
br /> There were no birds to be seen or heard. No animals, no insects, no small mammals. Just like home. She would like to see a moth, or even a beetle, scurrying along the ground. If this place were truly just for her, as the voice had said, insects should have been added.
Maybe the larvae had been a concession in that direction? Had they only appeared to her as she’d seen them, because she was familiar with caterpillars?
Now that she thought about it, the layout of this place, down to the fountain and the bench she sat on, could have been lifted straight out of childhood memories.
What would Mingh straw’s cage have looked like, had the girl lived, and been the one brought here? What did this place really look like under the veil of illusion she was sure the voice cast over it?
“Talk to me, voice.” She tried to stave off the recalled image of Mingh straw’s terrible fall. Light played through her lashes. “Explain everything to me.”
“Okay. For the first part, you’ll have to look. I’m going to show you something, if you can stay awake.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.” She opened her eyes; before her was a crude gram. Through it, the fountain sparkled. Drops set the image quivering. Whatever the source might be of this illusion it was very high, somewhere above the treetops or even above the barrier itself. From the infinite blue? Deidre moved from side to side to focus better on the projection, but what the blurred gram depicted, or even what scale it might be, she could not tell. Some large lumpy growth? A convoluted mound? The reception was atrocious. A living thing? Yet there were hard edges, hints of construction. A tumourous machine, resting on a fairly smooth surface.
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