by Jules Hedger
"Marty Kleizenberg here to see Cirrus, Cindy. I was summoned." The secretary looked down at her notebook and went down a very short list. Marty leaned over the desk curiously. The secretary looked up and smiled.
"Please don't lean over the desk. It casts a shadow." He went back, rolling his eyes. "Well, he should just be a few minutes. Why don't you, er –" she glanced pointedly at my dry heaves, "take this time to freshen up."
Thankfully, I could feel myself finally coming back down to earth. And with it the vague memories of swallowing a marble, being in my uncle's apartment and something about a lost world.
Marty turned around to help me up and led me to a pair of soft, but not too cushy waiting chairs. Easing myself down into one, I glared at Marty's amused face.
"What in the hell happened?" I growled.
"Oh baby, that is so cute. You look so pale! What a child you are, I always forgot!" Marty laughed and shook his head. "Don't worry, the effects are wearing off. Don't feel as sick as you did, do you?"
I tested my skin gingerly. It was tender and hot and tight. But the nausea was trickling away and the lights in the office, which seemed so bright before, were beginning to wear down to a tolerable glare. And I could see the waiting chairs and the acrylic rug and . . . well, ick.
"Did you drug me just to drag me to a dentist's office?" I asked.
Marty cocked a mischievous eyebrow. "Yes, I spirited you away from New York to another dimension only to give you a filling." I heard his pause and almost, almost mind you, a snigger. Again, ick. "No Maggie, we're here to meet Cirrus. He'll lay down the rules and the Walk will begin."
"Will he start by explaining the ‘walk'?" I asked. The secretary was giving me a rather odd look, but when I caught her staring she glanced quickly back at her appointment pad.
"Yes, of course. He's a dictator but he's not unfair." The secretary cleared her throat and Marty leaned forward pointedly. "Yes, report me Cindy. Go ahead. I see now how quickly your loyalties change."
Cindy gave a haughty little squeak and kept her eyes on the appointment book. Marty leaned over and whispered in my ear, "She acts so cold but I've heard her purr."
A soft bell toll rang from the ceiling and I heard the double office doors inside the adjoining hallway click.
"Cirrus will see you now," Cindy said pleasantly. Marty shot up from his chair and gestured frantically for me to stand. He gripped my wrist and pushed me in front of him.
"You need to walk in front of me. It will show confidence and courage. And I get to stare at your ass."
Yanking my hand out of his grasp I took my chance to pinch his neck hard. "You have gotten majorly dirty since arriving here. Can you pull it together? I am still Steve's niece."
Marty rubbed the spot on his neck and shot me an angry look. Giving my back a push to move he fell in behind me as we started towards the doors.
"I taught you that," I heard him mutter.
The double doors opened smoothly into a large, plush office swathed in maroon curtains and nearly stifling under the heat of a roaring fire. The man who was sitting in the armchair looked over steadily . . . and nearly knocked me off my high-tops.
He was beautiful. Can a man be beautiful and still be a man? Or does that make him handsome? He was shorter than I had imagined, with square spectacles that framed his eyes and strikingly platinum blond hair cut just below his ears. His strong cheek bones were smooth and shaven, and in the firelight the white hairs on the back of his hands looked soft and bright. But he was sturdy and strong and his eyes were piercingly green and looking straight at me. Through me, even.
"It's nice to see you, Maggie," Cirrus said genially. "I hope that you had a pleasant and uneventful trip." He glanced doubtfully at Marty standing straight and still behind me.
"It was a bit rushed. I wasn't given much time to . . . transition," Marty answered. Cirrus nodded and stood from his chair. "But of course, I took the heir into my care the moment I knew."
Cirrus's lithe body swept gracefully across the room to meet Marty at the door. His suit was cut perfectly and the gold pocket watch attached to his waistcoat gleamed. He was . . . strange. And perfect. And apparently challenging me to a duel or some other such crazy.
"Thank you, Martin. Please do wait outside until you're needed." Marty nodded, glanced once at me over Cirrus's shoulder, and spun quickly around and out the door. I listened to it click softly shut.
Cirrus turned around, head bowed and palms together in what looked like reverence.
"Thank you for coming." He stretched out his arm for a handshake. As I took a step forwards to meet him I noticed the dirt under his fingernails and the stains of ink that cracked along the lifeline of his palm, something I hadn't spotted at first in the dark light of the room. The edges of his sleeve were creased and yellow. Cirrus saw my eyes linger and pushed his hand quickly back into his trouser pocket.
"It's an . . . incredible honor to meet a living relative of the Painter. The next in the blood line. You have your uncle's . . . composure." He considered my ripped jeans and leather jacket. "But not exactly what I was expecting."
"What were you expecting?"
"Would you come closer to the fire, please? I wish to see your face." He offered his hand and I took it, hesitating only a little, and found his hands surprisingly cold. He walked slowly to the armchair and pulled me around in front of him. The fire crackled and I pushed my heels deep into the plush thread of the rug.
I felt Cirrus's eyes pouring over my face. So intent was his gaze that he could have been searching for something small enough to hide in an impossibly small crevice or invisible pore. Sinking slowly back into his armchair, his face held a look of fascination that made my stomach churn and my heart beat violently. I didn't dare look away from his eyes but I don't think I could if I tried. It was utterly terrifying.
"You're younger than I imagined," Cirrus murmured. The area around his eyes tightened and I started to feel a slight throb in my temples. Cirrus's spectacles glinted in the firelight. I felt a flurry in the back of my brain, like someone was shifting rapidly through the drawers of my mind. A small moan escaped from my lips as the throb became harder and harder . . .
"No," Cirrus said, pulling back and dropping my hand. The throbbing suddenly stopped and I was left with my head swimming. He smiled in amazement and looked at me wonderingly. "It's true, then," Cirrus whispered to himself. "It's as I suspected."
"What did you suspect?" I asked, blinking away the white haze. Ignoring me again, Cirrus turned his attention to the fire.
"Marty is a smart man," Cirrus said. "I know he doesn't sound it – or look it –but he works for me and I wouldn't have kept him on if I didn't think he was capable. He knows his way around, if only that."
"Smart and Marty are two words I never thought I would hear in the same sentence," I murmured. "But then again, I never thought I would swallow a marble and wake up here, all for the sake of a 'walk'."
Cirrus looked suddenly at me and gestured to the footstool beside him. He seemed to find it funny as I sat down.
"Look at you, the next in line . . . sitting at my feet. It's a fitting place. I love the way it feels. You understand that, don't you?
"You like power," I said. Cirrus nodded.
"Of course. Most people do."
"I really couldn't give a shit about power."
Cirrus steepled his fingers together and seemed to be fighting back a smile.
"That, my darling, is one of the reasons this will be so easy."
"Well, you seem to be finding getting to the point pretty damn hard" I said as my patience whittled away. Cirrus chuckled and rubbed his jaw.
"Your spark will come in handy out here in Palet." He paused, as if to ascertain my understanding. I was obviously an idiot. "Palet, as I am sure Mr. Kleizenberg explained, is the land created by your uncle. We are still young, but not once in over one hundred years did we think this would, or could, happen." He continued, relishing his next words. "Never t
hought our god was . . . mortal."
"Hundred years?" I scoffed. "My uncle might look older than he is but he's actually younger than my mom." Cirrus watched me as I babbled on. "And even though she's been 30 for over twenty years now, there is no way my uncle has been around for more than forty."
Cirrus shrugged and swept a palm over the warm air emanating from the fire.
"Time runs differently here. It must. Your uncle has been inciting awe and fear into the hearts of men since the dawn of time. But not now. Now he's as cold and dreamless as yourself." A chill ran down my spine and I shivered.
"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked. Cirrus rose and walked over to a side table. He placed his fingers lightly on a piece of paper laid out on its surface.
"Yes, the 'why me' part of this conversation. The heir to the throne and the Painter's niece." Cirrus spat out those last few words as stood from the footstool. "When this world was created, it came with a history. A code. According to tradition you should rightfully ascend to leadership. The books were written on the subject years ago when men thought it sufficient to declare the rules on paper." Cirrus sighed and turned around. "But there are those that challenge, that hope for something different and more ordered. Science, you could say, and reason instead of mystical la-de-dahs."
"Wonderful. I think that sounds great," I said, cutting him off. Cirrus raised his eyebrows and a wry smile touched his lips.
"That is all very well and good, Maggie but the people will never accept me as their king that easily. It would be considered a takeover or a coup. So I need to win fair and square, and there are traditions for that, as well." Cirrus looked at me brightly, his eyes suddenly lighting up with a new and less foreboding energy. "Drink?"
He brought out a crystal decanter full of a soft, golden liquid. I might have been in a different world with an incredibly handsome but power-hungry gentleman or tripping frantically on Marty's magic marble, but either way I needed some alcohol.
"Yes, please," I murmured. I accepted his outstretched glass gratefully. The golden liquid was whiskey, a low and mellow type that was so light it lingered more in the air than on the tongue. I looked up to see Cirrus considering me thoughtfully.
"You are of special interest to me, Maggie," he murmured. "Well, that's an understatement of sorts. What you are is an impossible, walking miracle."
Those words, coupled with the strong drink, sent a slight temporary numbing feeling along my arms and a heat rushing to my cheeks. He had thrown his net out and now, twisted up with his green eyes, I felt my body slowing expanding towards him. It didn't feel good, but it didn't feel unnatural either. But it was definitely out of my control. "You don't dream. I'm sure you've come to discover that this is a very rare phenomenon." Cirrus laughed shortly. "It's certainly a bizarre contrast we have, isn't it? You having no dreams at all and I having so many it's a wonder I'm not clinically insane."
My breaths were shallow, uncomfortable and he wouldn't look away or let me go.
"I'm sorry," I offered. Cirrus shrugged and a nervous grin flitted over his face. "So, what does that make me?" I asked finally.
"To me?" He paused and the net tightened. "To me, you're the cool breath of wind I need to wake up." I felt my face burn and he looked away, casting his net aside. I quickly shot back the rest of my drink. That was sure a strange way to put things.
Cirrus straightened his stance sharply and plucked up the piece of paper. "Your contract," Cirrus declared, laying it down on the desk with an air of finality, sweeping away my empty glass. "We will battle it out for the position of King. Or Queen. Let loose in the Middle Canvas, we work towards a common goal, using the tools given to us and the talents we've inherited."
"Common goal?"
Cirrus pulled a necklace out of his pocket; a simple, thin gold hoop netted with wire. "Accept the historic Reign Walk. Catch the opponent. Steal the symbol. Win."
"You want me . . . to fight you?"
"No, Maggie, I believe our modern time and the basic foundations of civility discourage warfare," he answered dryly and set the necklace pointedly on the contract. "Think of it more as a game of Hide-and-Seek."
I rubbed my warm cheeks and eyed the necklace suspiciously.
"It can't be as simple as that," I eventually countered. "If all you need to do is find the necklace, I could just hide out. Drop it in the sea. You could just take it right now."
"The rules of a Reign Walk are written into our constitution," Cirrus said. He traced his finger slowly around the thin chain as he explained. "There is no killing each other. You must never remove your symbol. And the Walk must end in a period of six days, after which the symbols we wear burn into our bodies and eat our souls, deeming us both unfit to rule."
"Eating our souls . . . symbolically?" I squeaked.
"The world of Palet is wide and ever-changing." He completely ignored the very legitimate concern of losing my human soul and pulled from out of his desk a large atlas. Flipping through a few pages, he smoothed down the crease in the middle and spun the book so that it was facing me. "We will both set down in the Middle Canvas," he said as I reached the table. "I will be on one side and you will be on the other. As we journey across the landscape, it is up to us to gain support wherever we can. And somewhere along the way, your symbol will be stolen." He smiled and patted my hand indulgently. "Or vice-versa, of course."
The landscape was green and dotted with various cities, roads and rivers. It could have been any countryside in any world. The green fields along the bottom and the side continued off the page, as if the land was constantly growing and the Middle Canvas was only the center of a much larger country. One thing was for sure: it was fucking huge.
"Where is that?" I asked, pointing at the blurry stretch of yellow desert that lined the top of the page. It was almost as if it hovered on another level, like a step up in the sky. Glancing up at Cirrus, I caught a shadow falling across his face. It was only fleeting.
"That is the Wilds . . . it's undomesticated and unexplored." With a determined shake of his head, he pulled the atlas out from under my hands and snapped it shut. "We won't be going there.
"But I've never liked ‘simple'," he continued swiftly. "I much prefer things that twist and I just can't pass up a chance to make it a little more interesting."
Much prefer things that twist . . . ? I didn't like how that sounded and the glint in his eye just fed my paranoia.
"I have the ability to bring your uncle back. His human soul, that is. His connection to the world he created would be severed. But if you win you get both the throne and the knowledge that your useless uncle wakes up on the floor after a particularly dangerous night on the needle."
"He's not useless," I whispered.
"Well, he is to me." Cirrus put his hands together as if to consider how to phrase his next sentence. "If I win, however, I get your throne and something further." Cirrus stood up smoothly and walked to a grand window on the far wall. He pushed back the velvet curtains and gestured me closer.
"Look out there," Cirrus told me as I approached the window. "It's dark out, I know, but try to see." I leaned forward slightly and looked hard into the night. I saw the dim outlines of trees and bushes, but little else.
"I see trees," I replied. Cirrus shook his head and gently pulled me closer to the glass. His fingers lingered on my arm, but he didn't seem to notice. His eyes were glued to the blackness outside.
"Look harder," he whispered. "Let your eyes get used to the dark."
I leaned again towards the glass and relaxed so that my eyes became familiar with the night-time. I could see the blades of grass growing near the bases of the trees and what looked like fireflies flittering around the low bushes. It was all very beautiful with no neon lights or discarded paper bags. My breath misted up on the dark glass like a winter cloud.
But suddenly, my heart jumped and I stepped back from the window as a thin shadow crawled across the ground out of the brush. It sniffed the air and yawned, emitti
ng a low hiss. I snapped my head to the man standing beside me, and his eyes were already on mine. He nodded slowly and motioned back to the window.
The creature, whatever the hell it was, slinked back off into the forest as another one crawled down from a branch. Its long arms dragged along the ground behind it and the claws from its hand dug into the earth to pull up rocks and clumps of foliage. They were only a few yards away from the window.
"Can they get in?" I heard myself saying. Cirrus shook his head. I searched higher above the trees and lower to the ground, realizing that the whole area was practically seething with shadows. And as we watched, the beginnings of purple smoke crept through the tree line and along the forest floor.
"What are they?" I asked.
"My dreams," Cirrus replied. He let the velvet curtain fall back against the window and stepped back. "My sleep is plagued with monsters; they follow me whenever I am grounded. It has become so easy to float this house away that I have spent very little time not in the air."
I remembered the purple cloud. The barren wasteland and the vicious, billowing violet haze that flew above it. Cirrus must have guessed my train of thought.
"He was a merciful Painter, I'll give your uncle that. He gave me an escape of sorts. A coward's escape, but beggars can't be choosers. I don't have his gift." His face momentarily clouded over with discomfort. "Unlike your uncle I cannot paint these creatures away. Those shadows that you saw outside didn't just appear. Your uncle painted his nightmares to get rid of them. I constructed them from material to do the same."
"You mean you made those things deliberately?" I asked in disbelief. Cirrus shot me a patient look and I gulped.
"Come now, Maggie. Do I look like a man who makes mistakes?" His eyes turned from green to gray as he watched me. "They've earned a name around Palet: my ‘experiments,' although they're nothing of the kind." He paused. "They are present in waking and present in sleep. They don't go away."