The Shoreless Sea

by J. Scott Coatsworth

At last it was done.

  Let’s go find our girl.

  They leapt forward, zipping across the open plain and back into the swamp beyond.

  “YOU DON’T love each other anymore. I can see it.”

  Lilith’s voice pried at world mind Andy like the dank air, trying to widen the space separating her from Shandra.

  They stared at each other as their essences were torn apart.

  Is it true?

  A complex cascade of emotions crossed Shandra’s face. Sorrow/need/regret/pain/fear.

  “Spangles and stars, staring at Mars, the red winds carry me into the dead air….”

  The briefest of smiles crossed Shandra’s lips.

  There was nothing to laugh at. Nothing at all. They were trapped in an existential crisis that might well burn them out of the world mind, if Lilith was allowed to gain access.

  They needed to be strong together, now more than ever, and they had allowed this thing between them to fester, to become weak.

  They had adapted to the world mind, but in the process, they had lost each other.

  “Squirrels and shells, buttons and bells….”

  Andy couldn’t help it. She laughed.

  Shandra’s smile returned and widened into a grin.

  Andy felt a little of the old warmth return. She loved how Shandra smiled. What her laugh sounded like, how Shandra grounded her own craziest impulses. Andy’s laughter grew, and the winds and smells around them lessened.

  “You don’t love each other!” Lilith insisted, but she sounded desperate.

  Shandra’s laughter joined Andy’s, and soon they sounded as maniacal as Lilith.

  They flowed back together, remembering so many things.

  I met you on a traxx, and you didn’t think I was the one, but I always knew.

  I saw how you were with the kids, and I loved you even more.

  I was so scared when Davian took control of you.

  I thought we were both going to die.

  We survived.

  We built something new together.

  We grew apart, but it’s not too late….

  I shouldn’t have kept it from you.

  It wasn’t you.

  I know. But I’m sorry. Oh fuck and Forever, I’m sorry.

  Silence. Then, I know.

  “No, you can’t do this…. You don’t love each other! Ashes and bells and kittens and stars—” Lilith was too late.

  They snapped back together as one, and there was no distance between them.

  This isn’t the end.

  We have a lot of work to do.

  First, we save Belynn.

  Lilith screamed, and her essence drew back from between them.

  Undeterred, they followed her, driving her back like a light against the dark.

  GORDY STARED at the strange scene, Kiryn and Dax kneeling together next to Belynn’s cot, Belynn’s mother Andy touching her cheeks.

  No one moved.

  “What do we do?”

  The others had gathered around them, mesmerized as well. Denna had a line of blood trickling from her forehead, and the others were battered and bruised, but none of them seemed to care.

  “Nothing. They have to fight for her. We’ve done all that we can.” Shandra reached up to put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You’re Belynn’s mother?”

  “Mamma, actually. That’s her mom.” She smiled faintly. “Easier to keep track of.”

  He laughed.

  “You must be Gordy. Belynn told us about you. Thank you for saving my daughter.” She hugged him tight. She was much smaller than he was. It was still strange to him, being in this big body. He supposed he’d have to give it up and return to New York when this was over, but he had no regrets.

  This was the most important thing he’d ever done in his life.

  She let go, and they turned to watch their friends and loved ones. To wait.

  LILITH’S MISTS parted with a final scream, and Kiryn/Dax/Andy stepped into the open space left by their departure.

  Belynn lay on the ground, hands clasped over her chest like a sleeping princess.

  As they watched, grass and flowers sprouted from the white surface all around her.

  Belynn lay silently among the blossoms, not moving a muscle.

  On the other side of her, someone else appeared from the mists.

  The world mind.

  She looks like you.

  She was me, once. But she was Shandra too.

  They knelt on either side of Belynn, five minds in two forms, and put their hands on her.

  She was cold to the touch, like ice, and her skin was blue.

  Around them, Lilith rumbled like an angry storm.

  “I have to bring her back.” Kiryn let go of the others. They split apart, all surrounding the prone figure.

  He squeezed Andy and Dax’s hands and knelt once more next to his sister. He put his hands on her cheeks and turned her head gently toward his.

  “Belynn. Wake up.”

  She remained stubbornly unconscious.

  Kiryn wanted to reach into her, but that had never been one of his gifts.

  Instead he sang.

  Little Tansy red shoes,

  Slipping through the vines,

  He held her hand as he sang, wishing her back to him.

  Gathering the berries

  To make the berry wines….

  BELYNN WAS cold, so cold. Her blood had run to ice, and she couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t care.

  It was too late. She had failed. Failed herself. Failed Kiryn. Failed them all.

  The monster inside her had consumed her, and soon she would wither and die in her own mind. Better to die than to witness what Lilith would do to the world.

  Something whispered in her ear.

  Little Tansy red shoes….

  It sounded like Kiryn. That was impossible. Kiryn was lost too.

  Slipping through the vines….

  She struggled to thaw, to force her lethargic limbs to move.

  He needed her. He was calling to her.

  Gathering the berries….

  She was trapped. Locked in her own private hell. She could feel him now, so close, but still so far away. Like she was separated from him by a wall of ice.

  Not just Kiryn, but others too. They had come to find her.

  Still, she was bound and gagged in her own mind. She couldn’t reach him.

  Her frustration built as she tried to find a way out, a way back.

  To make the berry wines….

  She screamed.

  THE WORLD exploded in golden light, pushing back Lilith’s darkness.

  Kiryn and the others held tight to Belynn as raw power poured out of her prone form, her skin once again warming and taking on its normal rosy glow.

  The light pushed outward, reaching Lilith’s storm, and shredded it as if it were nothing.

  Lilith boiled and screamed back, but her strength was useless against Belynn’s.

  The world around them transformed as the swamp pulled back, trees and bushes sprouting, hillsides pushing their way up out of the ground while creeks and valleys formed around them.

  The stench in the air disappeared, and still the glow continued to spread.

  Above, the sky filled with stars.

  Kiryn glanced at Dax, who stared back at him wild-eyed.

  Still Belynn’s scream went on.

  DENNA SLAPPED Gordy’s shoulder. “Look!”

  Belynn was starting to glow.

  The golden light spread through the room.

  The captive acolytes struggled against their bonds, their eyes wide.

  A surge of energy passed through him. This is it. He was about to be banished to his own world, or worse, maybe erased entirely.

  He had made peace with it. This was not his world, not his body. He had no right to it.

  How many other times had he been looped back to the beginning again, in New York? He would survive this, and if not, he’d ha
d more than his nine lives.

  He felt something. A presence in his mind weighing him. Judging him. Not you.

  The light passed through him and was gone.

  Gordy touched his chest, his arms, his face. I’m still here. Why am I still here?

  Then the light faded, leaving the room lit only by luthiel.

  Andy let go of Belynn’s cheeks, a look of wonder on her face.

  Belynn’s eyes opened and met Gordy’s.

  She gave him a weak smile, and then her eyes snapped shut and her head rolled to one side.

  He leapt forward to her bedside. “Is she okay?”

  Andy stood, blinking. “She will be. It’s over. For now.”

  Gordy hugged her.

  Andy laughed and hugged him back.

  He let go and turned to face Kiryn and Dax.

  “You two okay?”

  Kiryn nodded. “Thanks to you. What happened here?”

  “I think… they are all gone.” He glanced back at the captives scattered along the hallway. “Your sister….”

  “She banished them. I don’t know how. Nastra said we were the gateway… maybe she found a way to close the gate.” He staggered.

  “Go lie down with Dax. We can take care of the rest.” He hugged his friends and sent them off.

  He looked at Belynn, who was out like a light. Why did you spare me? The answer would have to wait until she had a chance to recuperate. Whatever she had done seemed to have drained her.

  With a sigh, Gordy turned to help check and untie the captives.

  Astin, the owner of this body, was trapped somewhere inside of him, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to live with that.

  He sighed and threw himself into the task. Time enough to worry about that tomorrow.

  Chapter Fourteen: Broken

  BELYNN CLIMBED out of the hole, into the fresh air of the house and the world above the tunnels.

  The voices started up immediately in her mind, but she shoved them aside.

  Andy and Kiryn had checked her out before they’d let her get out of bed, and they’d even made her wait for a doctor to come see if she was really “okay.”

  She felt anything but.

  Her mind felt stained.

  Somehow when they’d found her inside her own head, she had found a way to push Lilith back. She’d screamed like a banshee, Kiryn had told her. Somehow she had driven out the acolytes from all of their hosts, and Lilith from her own mind.

  She had no memory of that.

  Belynn made her way to the front porch, relieved to have a few moments to herself. She sat on the steps, looking out into the night.

  They had all made it through—they’d managed to stop the intifada. The Rising.

  And now something had changed inside of her. Something was broken.

  She pulled out the flask from her pocket and stared at it.

  She took the silver cross that hung around her neck in her hands and squeezed it tightly.

  It had meant something to her great-grandfather, something larger than it meant to her. To him, it had been a symbol of good in the world. Of goodness beyond the world.

  To her, it was just something beautiful her mother had given her.

  She wondered what Jackson had felt when he’d held it in his hands.

  When he’d prayed.

  She closed her eyes, hoping to feel something bigger than her. Bigger than the world. Something she could put her trust in to make things right again. To make her right again.

  Nothing presented itself. Disappointed, she opened her eyes and stared at the flask. All I have is you. She opened it and took a long sip, feeling the spirits slip down her throat and into her stomach, warming her gut.

  Slowly the voices dimmed, becoming a whispering background noise.

  She could live like this. She could be numb again.

  The door opened behind her, and Gordy came to sit next to her on the steps. “Rough night.”

  She laughed in spite of herself. “You could say that.”

  “Can I?”

  She handed him the flask.

  He took a sip. “Oooh, this is good. What is it?”

  “Red berry wine.” Not the same one her parents made. Not nearly as good. But just as effective.

  They sat together for a moment, breathing in the fresh air, staring at the city below. The Embassy District was on a hillside above the lower town where a few lights sparkled.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.” The wine was having its effect. It washed away the stain on her soul. Or maybe it masked it. It didn’t matter which.

  “You… I’m still here. You sent the rest of them back, but not me. Why?”

  He was brain-dead. “He’s gone, Gordy.”

  “Who’s gone?”

  “Astin. The man whose body you took.” She took one more sip of the wine and put the flask away. It wasn’t like she was an alcoholic. She just needed enough to manage her pain. “Nastra told me. I think you were an experiment. I think they felt bad about taking over someone else’s soul. Astin… he was brain-dead. Gone.”

  Gordy took a deep breath and sighed. When he looked up at her, his eyes were wet. “You have no idea what a relief that is. That poor guy.”

  She squeezed his shoulder.

  “It’s good to hear.”

  She kissed his cheek.

  In return, he pulled her close and hugged her. “Hey, you okay?”

  “No.” It was going to be a long time before she was okay again. Still, he was warm next to her. Warm and kind.

  She could do worse.

  They sat together for a long time, a comfortable silence between them, until the others came out of the house and broke the mood.

  KIRYN AND Dax walked hand in hand back toward his dorm. The world seemed right again, the threat of the inthworld, if not ended, at least put off until another day.

  Kiryn had checked in on Belynn. His sister was shaken. She needed a little time and space to recover.

  He’d found her sitting with Gordy on the front porch of the mansion. Gordy was good for her. Strong. Solid. A bit immature, maybe, but he had a good heart.

  Kiryn’s parents had checked all the other acolytes with the help of the world mind. Each of them reported the same thing he had—being trapped in their own minds, aware of everything that had happened to them but unable to do anything about it.

  A couple had been on the edge of madness, gibbering in the dim light of the tunnels but afraid to come out into the light.

  The rest would certainly recover.

  At the entry to the dorm, he paused. In his mind’s eye, he could still see Aric lying there, dead in a pool of his own blood.

  “Can I stay with you tonight?” He signed it slowly, one letter at a time.

  At the end, Dax’s face lit up. “Yes.”

  “Thank you.” For saving me. It was a private thought, but he could see that Dax understood.

  Dax blushed. “I love… I love being with you.”

  Kiryn chuckled. It was early for the L word, but they had just been through a lot together. He’d have to teach Dax to sign properly if this was ever going to go anywhere.

  He kissed Dax softly, sweetly. “Take me home.”

  ANDY AND Shandra withdrew back into the world mind, but not from each other. Andy, Shandra, and the others could figure out things from there.

  I’m sorry.

  We let ourselves drift apart.

  We can’t do that again.

  The distance between them had been weighing on Andy’s mind for so long.

  I missed you. This. Us.

  I was scared to lose myself. To not be me anymore.

  I know. But I like being us. Together.

  I do too.

  Andy was sad to learn that Gordy wasn’t from Earth. Somehow a piece of the old world mind must have survived, somewhere within Forever. The inthworld, Belynn had called it.

  They would have to track it down and do something about that or t
his would all happen again. Or worse.

  The memory of Davian’s betrayal was still fresh in their minds.

  It would have been comforting to know a piece of humanity’s past had survived. That they weren’t the only last hope.

  She sighed.

  For now, she would concentrate on Shandra, on rebuilding what the two of them had lost. They could start their search for the inthworld soon enough.

  Of course, being the world mind, she had the capacity to do about a thousand other things at the same time, so maybe—

  One of her alerts flashed in her mind.

  What is it?

  The signal.

  She unwrapped the alert. One of her data phages had managed to decode it using an old protocol, apparently based on the table of elements.

  It was a fairly short repeating message, combined with a fairly massive amount of data—songs and books and news and more about a little blue-and-green speck called Earth.

  She shared it with Shandra.

  “To anyone out there who may read this, we are a race called humans, on a small rocky planet, third from our yellow sun. We have survived a terrible catastrophe, and those of us who are left will rebuild our world. If this reaches any of the seed ships, know that our hopes and dreams go with you. If it should reach any other sentient life in our galaxy, know that we were here. That we built a culture both terrible and beautiful. If this effort fails, we want the universe to know that we were here, and that we tried to build a better world.”

  —Signed Tarik Aufor, Moon Base Alpha

  Someone back on Earth survived! She could feel Shandra’s joy.

  Andy laughed. Yes, they did.

  Do we let Andy know?

  It was too late to turn back. They’d built up enough velocity that it would take years, maybe decades to slow and even begin a journey back home.

  Not home. It wasn’t home. Not anymore. They had left that place long ago, physically and metaphorically. We are no longer earthlings.

  She felt Shandra’s assent. They must never know.

  Andy nodded. It would bring up too many questions and unearth too much old history and pain.