They seemed to come from three places—New York City, Fargo, and Frontier Station. But there was a fourth place, too, according to Aine—somewhere else that didn’t seem to match any of the other three.
It was why they’d brought four Liminals on this quest, and Destiny.
Se was special. Se would be their anchor, and with Belynn, their means to keep in touch with one another. If his plan worked.
It’s better than the one I had, he acknowledged. Kiryn felt better.
Once this is over, we won’t have to live in fear anymore.
He nodded. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, sis.
We’re here for each other now. She reached out her hand to touch his and gave him a shy smile.
It was enough for now.
GORDY LOOKED around uneasily.
The tunnel they’d entered an hour before wound steadily downward, following a shallow but fairly steady course into the bowels of the world. It was pitch-black ahead and behind them, with only a luthiel lantern lighting the way. He hoped Kiryn had brought enough oil.
The walls had transitioned from packed earth to black stone, hollowed out by something round and large.
Even so, the whole place felt like it was one good shaking away from collapse, and they were far below the surface now.
“You okay?” Destiny stared at him with ser ice-blue eyes, almost radiant against ser skin. Se rode beside him as they made their way toward their destination down the dark passageway.
“Not really. I don’t like confined spaces.” He looked around. “Especially when they look like they might quickly become even more confined.”
Se laughed. “I know what you mean. I don’t like it down here either.”
Up ahead, Belynn and Kiryn rode side by side, heads together. Dax brought up the rear.
“You okay back there?” Gordy called over his shoulder.
“I’ll manage.” Gordy knew that Dax didn’t like heights, but he didn’t seem too thrilled with the depths, either.
Gordy cast his gaze ahead. Soon they would reach the place, far into the bowels of Forever, where the inthworld lived. Where he himself had come from. It was a strange thought—the idea that his whole former life fit inside a miniscule mind so much smaller than Forever. Exactly how big it was, he couldn’t be sure, but it had to be fairly small to have remained hidden all these years.
What would it feel like to go home? Had anything changed there since he’d left? Would he find himself face-to-face with a copy of himself? That would be weird.
“What’s it like?”
He turned to stare at Destiny. Se was so young. So inexperienced. Probably too young to be on a mission like this, but they apparently needed ser. He trusted Kiryn’s judgment. “It’s… it’s big. I mean, it’s small here, but inside… it’s a whole city. And more.”
He’d heard from Kiryn that there were other cities, other places inside the inthworld, but he’d only ever seen New York.
All of them were remnants of the great Jackson Hammond’s life. It was weird that Jacky, his childhood friend, had become a legend.
“Belynn said it’s always the same?”
He laughed. “Not exactly. It loops. At least, New York looped. Every eight years or so, it loops back to the beginning. But the last few times… something changed. Each loop, I could remember bits and pieces of my life from the last time. Like a really intense sense of déjà vu.”
Gordy wondered if time passed at the same rate in the inthworld as here. Was a day there a day here too? He remembered the flames on the horizon. Had they closed in on the city yet?
Kiryn and Belynn had picked up the pace and were pulling away ahead.
“Come on! I think we’re there!” Belynn said over her shoulder, and grinned and turned away.
Destiny shot Gordy a questioning look. “Wanna bet what we’ll find?”
He shrugged. “No way. I always lose those bets. We’ll just wait and see when we get there.”
Destiny stuck ser tongue out at him.
Something was changing. The air was cooler, fresher, and there was a silver glow that lit the tunnel, blending in with the lantern’s golden glow to light their way.
Still the tunnel continued on uninterrupted, leading them down. Gordy stared at the darkness ahead. How far down can we go?
Somewhere below, presumably not too far, was the void of space.
At last, though, the tunnel ended, and they rode into a wonderland.
LOOKING UP in amazement, Destiny pulled Tansy to a halt.
They had entered a vaulted cavern, one seemingly melted out of the rock heart of the world.
To ser left, a waterfall gushed from an opening in the wall, cascading its way down to a wide pool at the base to run in a lazy brook around the far side of the cavern, disappearing into a dark hole in the wall.
The walls themselves were rough and covered with ferns and little round shapes—silver dots about the size of ser closed fist. They emitted a glow, along with the ferns that lit the underground space. It was big, maybe fifty meters across in all.
Destiny dismounted, letting go of Tansy’s reins.
Tansy wandered over to a patch of overgrown glowing grass and chomped away happily.
Destiny plucked one of the little oblong things and held it in ser hands, sniffing at it suspiciously. Se broke it open, and it emitted the most wonderful smell, sweet and rich and dark. Se brought it to ser mouth and took a bite.
“Hey, that’s not a good idea—” Gordy reached for it.
Too late. “It’s delicious.” It had a musky taste that lingered on ser tongue.
“It might be dangerous. Even poisonous.”
Se looked down at it and frowned. “It doesn’t taste poisonous….”
He sighed. “Just… be careful.”
Something had the others entranced.
Se followed their gaze, and ser hand dropped to ser side, letting go of the strange fruit or fungus, whatever it was.
Se took a few hesitant steps forward to where the ground ended.
Well, not ended, exactly.
Se knelt to get a closer look at the boundary.
There was ground, and then there were lights. Extraordinary lights.
Se rubbed away a film of dust and stared down in awe. “What are they?”
Gordy knelt beside ser, his eyes as wide as sers. “I think they’re stars.”
The five of them stood at the edge of the wide circle. Hundreds—no, thousands—of white sparkly lights moved underfoot from right to left in lockstep, slowly traversing the circle.
Destiny took off ser shoes and strode out onto the clear floor, ser feet leaving footprints in the dust where the stars shone through.
“Des!” Gordy sounded really annoyed now. “What did I tell you about being careful?”
Se blushed. “I can’t help myself. It’s so beautiful.” Eddy had told ser about the stars—bright lanterns hung from hooks in the sky—but se’d never imagined they would be like this.
“ONCE UPON a time, I came to Forever across a sea of stars, in a little ship smaller than this house.” Uncle Eddy waved his arm around the living room where they all sat together after dinner, his hand shaking. “All around us, a million million stars sparkled like little flickering candles against the inky blackness of night.”
“What are stars?” Rooney lay on her back on the red-and-gold hand-woven rug, looking up at the ceiling, absently twirling her long brown hair with her finger.
Destiny plopped down on the rug next to her, staring at the rafters as if se could see stars beyond them.
“Each star is a distant sun, so far it takes more than a year for light to reach us, even from the nearest ones.”
“What’s a sun?” Destiny tried to imagine it, a huge candle in space.
Eddy laughed. “A sun is a huge ball of flame in the sky. On Earth, it kept us all warm.”
“Didn’t it burn you?” A huge ball of fire in the sky. It sounded dangerous.
�
�Sometimes, yes.” He and Santi shared a gaze. “That’s a long story.”
“Was it like the spindle?” Destiny was transfixed by the idea.
Rooney not so much. She had dozed off.
Destiny snorted.
“Yes and no. Like the spindle, it provided light for about twelve hours a day, more or less. But it was much hotter and much farther away.”
It seemed so vast, so improbable. Maybe Rooney had the right idea.
Destiny closed ser eyes and snuggled up next to ser friend.
But that night, se dreamed of a sky full of stars.
NOW SE was seeing them serself, and they were beautiful, but disappointing too. They didn’t look like big balls of fire. More like little multicolored lanterns, seen from a distance. But there were so many!
Se knelt to get a better view, wiping the dust away, and grunted. They looked about the same.
“Guys, come take a look!” Dax signed and spoke the words. He’d wandered over to the far edge of the cavern, near the waterfall.
Belynn tapped Kiryn on the shoulder and repeated the message.
Destiny ran to where Dax stood, stopping abruptly when se saw what he’d found.
There was a raised stone dais, and on top of it lay a shriveled, twisted shape.
The others joined them in a quiet circle.
“That can’t be.” Belynn’s hands were hesitant. She stared down at the blackened form.
Kiryn nodded. “I think it must be.”
Gordy looked from one to the other. “Who? What am I missing?”
“Davian.”
Destiny shuddered at the name.
Everyone knew of Davian the Betrayer. He was part of their history, a black mark on the past that was told to children in dark stories at bedtime to frighten them.
Behave, or Davian the Betrayer will come in the night to steal your soul.
Destiny stared at the shape, seeing the skull, the shriveled limbs. He didn’t look so scary. Not unless he suddenly reanimated himself and climbed up off the dais.
Se slipped behind Gordy’s big frame, just in case.
“It makes sense.” Kiryn frowned. “This must be where he went to hide with Jayson, after Agartha.” He cast his gaze around, looking for something. “There.”
They followed his gesture. Halfway around the cavern, there was another entrance. “That’s how they got here.”
“You think Jayson built this place?” Belynn looked around the wide space, then down at the stars below.
Kiryn nodded. “It has everything they would have needed. Food, water, air.”
“And the stars.” Destiny couldn’t help being drawn back to them. They were small and insignificant-looking, but there were so many of them, and they spoke to the possibility of other places besides here.
“They were both from Earth,” Belynn said softly. “They would have missed the stars.”
“They’re beautiful.” Destiny liked speaking with ser hands. There was an elegance to it, and a feeling of being a part of a special club. The sign for stars was like pointing to different ones above ser head… only they were below ser, so that was confusing. Weren’t they supposed to be up in the sky?
Something caught ser eye. There was a dark space, hidden behind the waterfall.
Se darted away to see what was there.
Gordy tried to catch ser but missed ser hand. “Des, where are you going?”
Destiny turned. “I saw something.” Kiryn gave ser a nod of approval for ser signing, and se felt all warm inside.
Se reached the waterfall and slipped behind it.
There was a small pocket of space there, dimly lit by the partial light from outside. In it, something strange.
Se popped back out. “Is this what we’re looking for?”
The others followed ser, crowding into the small space.
A gray thing about twice ser size crouched against the back wall of the hollow, dark limbs like roots securing it to the ground. It looked sick, somehow, its color hazy, green pulses of light shooting somewhat erratically across its surface.
Kiryn touched ser shoulder. “It’s a biomind. Smaller than the world mind, but yeah. Good job.”
Se beamed at his approval and turned ser attention back to the mind. “Is the inthworld in there?”
Gordy nodded. “I think so.” He was shaking.
Se put ser arms around him and hugged him. “It’s going to be okay.”
He sighed. “I wish I could believe that.”
Se was glad se came. These people needed ser. It felt good to be needed by someone.
“What do we do now?”
Chapter Four: Into the Inthworld
ANDY PACKED up her things—a couple changes of clothing, some dried bread and fruit, some water, and her knife.
Shandra packed her own carry sack, and in fifteen minutes they were ready to go.
There was a mail drop due in another quarter hour. Her access to the exact time was cut off along with her connection to the world mind, but she had gotten adept at telling the time from the shading of the spindle. It was almost second nature now.
They left the Estate on foot. Andy glanced back at the old house, recalling the day, almost five decades earlier, when she’d first arrived there on horseback.
Colin, where are you now? The Immortals had vanished with Davian’s arrival. She wondered if they had ceased to exist. Or if… maybe… there was some other place out there where they could have gone.
Now, Kiryn and Belynn were on a crazy mission to stop these strange uprisings. Her son had stopped at the Estate a week earlier to tell her about his plans, before he and his friends had gone on to find Belynn and someone named Destiny.
Andy snorted. Apt name, that.
She walked side by side with Shandra, holding out her hand.
Shandra took it in her own, and they strolled under the apple trees in the orchard.
The trees lit their path with a golden glow. Andy stopped to pick a couple of ripe apples, handing one to Shandra and taking a bite of the other herself. It was sweet and delicious.
The air shimmered with pollen.
“We’ll be back home soon enough.” Shandra sounded certain of it. A little too certain.
They resumed their walk toward the landing field. “Probably you’re right.” Andy bit into the apple. It had a satisfying crunch. “It just feels… final somehow. Leaving.”
“Maybe so.” Shandra bit into her own apple, the glowing juices running down her chin.
Andy laughed and reached up to wipe them off. She licked up the juice, and her fingers were sweet and salty at the same time. “I thought, all those years ago, that we’d come to the end of things.”
Shandra nodded. “I remember.” She took another bite, looking thoughtful. “These last twenty-four years have been a blessing. They gave us Kiryn and Belynn.”
With help from the world mind. Andy nodded. “I worry about her.”
Few knew it, but their children were truly the product of them both, combined with the help of the world mind in one of her secret gene pools. They’d expected a girl first, but Kiryn showed up. So they’d saved their girl’s name for their second child. Since the day each one of them had been born, Andy had felt the connection, like a living cord that ran from her heart to each of theirs.
Time had taken the edge off the pain of separation. After all, one’s children were supposed to go out into the world, to find out who they were and what they wanted to be, and to start a new life separate from their parents.
And yet the connection never entirely went away.
That day when they’d sent Kiryn and Belynn off to school had been one of her proudest. And her most devastating. And now….
Shandra watched her as they walked. “They’ll be okay.” She had always been good at following Andy’s thoughts.
“But how can you know that?” Andy turned on her, exasperated. “How can you be so sure? The world is a dangerous place, in ways even we never suspected before. Ho
w can you know they’ll be okay?”
Shandra bit her lip, a sure sign she was holding something back.
Andy poked her arm. “Tell me.”
Shandra sighed, her hazel eyes sliding away to look up at the heavens. “Because I have to be sure. If I’m not, I’ll fall to pieces.”
Andy stared at her and then started laughing.
“What?”
She pulled Shandra close. “Sorry. It’s just… look at the pair of us, falling to bits together.”
Shandra’s face was drawn. “I’m scared, Andy.”
“I am too.” She squeezed Shandra hard, feeling a surge of love for her wife, her partner of almost half a century. Andy let go and sighed. “We have to be each other’s strength, okay?”
Shandra nodded. “Easier said than done, apparently. If you’d just leave me alone and not pick at my carefully constructed facade….”
Andy smiled. “I’ll try.” They cleared the orchard. The balloon came down from the spindle, right on schedule.
Andy waved, running across the open field as quickly as her sixty-two-year-old legs would carry her.
She recognized the pilot—it was Colin, Marissa’s boy. Her second cousin. That made things easier. “Colin!” She wondered if the boy knew about what had happened to Marissa.
Colin waved as the balloon descended toward the landing pad. The boy had been working for the postal service for almost a year now, and he’d gotten really good at piloting the blue-and-gold balloon. He was a handsome kid, stocky like his father, with a shock of dark hair and his mother’s piercing green eyes.
“Andy, Shandra!” The balloon’s basket set down, and he hopped out to tie it to the waiting post. “Something’s wrong. I can’t reach anyone. Not Mom, not the world mind….” He threw himself into Shandra’s arms. “Is it an uprising?”
Andy shuddered. “We think so. Are you okay?”
He nodded. “I came as soon as it happened. I thought you two would know what to do.”
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