They walked on what seemed to have once been a road. There were still bushes and flowers all over the place, but they had to fight their way through the pavement to get both sunlight and soil. They were smaller than the wild ones. Their stalks were thicker.
Lizards crawled over the ruins. As they turned around a corner they surprised a large white and blue bird. It took off and rose far up into the sky to get away from them. The bird didn’t look alien, but neither of them had ever seen one quite like it either.
They found an old fountain. Water was flowing up, presumably from a well deep below the Venus. They were both thirsty, so they stopped and drank. It tasted very clean and pure and cold. Against the stonework of the fountain, Romana found an identifiable shape in the carvings. It was a pitchfork.
A little while later it started to rain. They found shelter in a small building which still had three-quarters of a ceiling over one of the rooms. The rain was orange as it fell, but when it landed it appeared to be colorless. The puddles looked just like normal earthly puddles, except when they caught the reflection of the Venusian sky above.
The room they took shelter in had at one time been covered in carvings. What was left was difficult to make any sense of. When they ran their hands over them, pebbles broke and poured off. It was a miracle that any of the walls were standing anywhere in the city.
“You’re so quiet. Are you still thinking about Zeus?” Romana asked Edward.
“It’s not exactly like I’m thinking. It’s like it’s playing over and over in my head.”
“I read the pages that you wrote before you passed out. Do you think the aliens put the story in your head?”
“I know they did.”
“Why would they do that?”
Edward didn’t answer for a long time. “At first I thought they wanted me to write it down, like they were using me to bring the story into the world. Then I thought they wanted me to understand something… Now I think they just want to use it to drill a hole in my head.”
“You mean, to make you crazy?”
“Yeah. It’s like if someone made you listen to the same song over and over again and it burned – it branded itself into the tissues of your brain.”
“Well, even if that’s true, they could have used any story to do that, or even just noise. Why this particular story?”
“Well, then I’m back to thinking that they wanted me to see something in it.”
He had decided not to tell her about the crystal. He wasn’t sure if the memories were true, or if the crystal had just given them to him. Having a foreign object in his head could be just like having an intruder in his mind. He couldn’t be sure that the voices which seemed to be his thoughts were really his own, and not someone else speaking in his mind.
He found himself holding one of the magnets and running his fingers over it, as if that would keep him safe. But in fact, he was prepared for Plutonians on Venus, not Venusians on Venus. The magnet wasn’t going to be much help at all.
The rain started falling harder. The sky got darker. They were lucky to have the shelter. Still, the room was shallow and they felt the mist. As the storm grew more powerful, they were getting wet and they huddled together for warmth watching the alien colors battle in the heavens above.
Shapes began to pass above them. They saw shadows first, and then long black lines almost swimming through the clouds. Only a couple at first, and then a dozen or more.
It was Edward who recognized them, “Caterpillars, at home in the skies of Venus.”
When he had seen the first one in Mia’s house, he had thought that it flew in through the rift. Then he had convinced himself that it simply held its body erect, like a king cobra, but now there was no doubt. The monsters could fly. He imagined them swooping down and devouring pigs and goats and children.
12
They fell asleep in the ruins, leaning against the crumbling wall and holding each other. It wasn’t sexual; they instinctually trusted each other. The storm stopped while they were dreaming.
Romana dreamed she was being chased by Tres Horrendous, the three-headed man. But in her dream, his three faces matched her father, her grandfather, and Edward. They chased her through Edward’s garden, past all of the bunny rabbits. She caught her foot on a tree stump. She fell. It was the sensation of falling which woke her up.
Edward dreamed that he was a tree spirit named Golgee, the little sapling who traveled to mount Olympos and told Zeus that his brother Pluto had cheated him. When they divided the universe, they thought it was split into three equal portions: the Sky, the Sea, and the Underworld. But the Underworld contained all the space beneath the planet Earth: the galaxies and supernovas, black holes and red dwarves… This was just like the story that the aliens had put in his head. The dream was different though. In Edward’s dream, Zeus was angry with Edward for suggesting he had been cheated. Zeus cursed Edward and told him that he was going to slowly transform Edward into a merman.
They both woke up confused and wet and sore. It was night-time, but in the distance they could see the beginnings of the sunrise. The reds and oranges were bold and bombastic. It was a sky which deserved to be painted.
But they both felt weak and vulnerable. The fight with Tres Horrendous, the long walk through the desert, and then the night in the rain had drained them. Venus was silent, except for the quiet sound of water dripping somewhere nearby. There were no insects or birds chirping. There was no traffic.
“Do you think there are a lot of devils living on Venus?” Edward asked.
“I think there are. Maybe as many of them here as we have humans on Earth.”
“Why don’t they overrun us? Why don’t they send an army?”
“I don’t know if they want to conquer the world. They’re not really like people. I know they like hurting men and women. I know they can’t be trusted. I know they don’t want to let any humans have magic.”
“Why? Why should they care?”
“Maybe they’re worried that we’ll invade them? Or, I don’t know, maybe they don’t want us to make the Solar System too strange. If one person casting magic can make their body change, what would happen if a million people knew spells?”
“Where does it all come from?” Edward asked.
“What?”
“The spells. I mean, surely no one ever simply sat down and imagined every picture and symbol one after another and waited until a miracle occurred? A man in Egypt didn’t simply open his mouth one day and shout, long-necked reptile, circle with a foot in it –“
Romana suddenly smacked him with the blunt of her pitchfork.
“Eh! Leave off! What’s that for?”
“I don’t want to know your spell! What are you trying to do – give me dolphin skin like you have?” Romana shouted at Edward.
“I apologize. I should have thought.” Edward quickly apologized, but he didn’t appreciate her bringing up his problem.
They started moving forward again. For no particular reason, they continued in the same general direction they had been moving in since they arrived. The ground began to slope forward. There were deep gouges in it. Very few of the buildings were still standing. Even the walls in that section had fallen right onto their sides. Bricks were in high crumpled piles. There was a large quantity of twisted and rusted metal, but it had lost all hint of its original shape.
They slowly began to realize that the downward sloping path they were walking in was actually a crater. A bomb or a meteor, or some other sort of violence, had hit the ground right in the middle of the city. The bricks were just shattered. They were broken. They hadn’t simply fallen down, but had been blown asunder.
Romana started keeping an eye out for bones.
At length, they saw a large structure in the distance. It was still intact. As they approached, it got bigger and bigger. It wasn’t in ruins. It wasn’t made of pink sandstone. The building was a great red and black dome decorated with dozens and dozens of towers.
B
efore they reached the dome, the ground leveled off and then began to slope upward. The ground had clearly been burnt centuries before. What looked like puddles turned out to be melted glass pooling in the crevasses. Some of the glass was cloudy and colorless, but there seemed to be red and blue glass now and again mixed in among the broken bricks and the twisted metal.
When they got to the dome it was larger than they’d imagined. It was bigger than any sports stadium, or castle, or building either of them had ever seen. The outer walls were clean and looked new. There wasn’t a single scratch or even any dust on it. The colors shined, as if they were moist, but they confirmed by hand that they were actually dry.
They walked around for a while until they got to an entrance. In front of an open archway there was a beautiful statue of white sparkling stone. Almost like opal, different colors flowed over it. In form it was a twenty-foot high representation of a dinosaur. The long neck and tail were easy for them both to recognize.
“It’s a brontosaurus,” Romana identified it.
“Why all of the long-necked reptiles?” Edward asked. “It’s the first symbol in one of my spells.”
“Mine too,” Romana admitted quietly.
“The other one starts with an inverted pyramid,” Edward told her. He wanted to be careful, but it seemed safe to just share the first symbol.
Romana thought out loud, “I don’t know if the symbols have any inherent meaning. I’d always assumed that they were random. Maybe all of the spells from Venus start with a brontosaurus?”
“Yeah, but why would that be? I don’t see the relationship between a dinosaur and devils or the second planet from the sun…or the Goddess of Love for that matter.”
They stood there for a while admiring the statue. Edward swayed back and forth, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right and back again. The colors shifted whenever he moved.
Romana blinked her left eye and then her right, achieving the same effect that Edward was.
A little while later they walked in through the arch. The floor was pink sand, soft and deep, and clean – very different from the hard and punished sand outside of the building. It was dimly lit by a number of glass windows high above. There were chairs, some of which were reminiscent of church pews. There were several large tables. Nothing looked broken. Everything was bare, but unscratched, undamaged. It was all very strange to find in the middle of a blast-zone.
Edward and Romana looked up and saw a massive carving of a long-necked reptile on the wall, then a picture of a sword piercing a heart.
Romana turned away and covered her eyes.
Edward saw a great hairy monster with large paws, maybe a bear? Then he willed his eyes to close. It was very hard for him to do. He liked knowing secrets.
“It’s a spell,” Edward said.
“It’s probably a trap.” Romana stood up again, but kept her back to both Edward and the wall the spell was written on.
“Oh… what a trap! Imagine that. If you could write a few words on your door and turn anyone who reads it into a frog.” Edward was filled with admiration.
Romana looked around her at the massive space. It was dark and quiet. The walls may have looked new, but it all felt impossibly old. She didn’t like it. “Edward, we need to go home.”
“How do we do that?”
“What would happen if you tried to summon the monster again? Do you think it would open a rift again from this side?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t like using so much magic. I’m worried that it is going to make my back worse. What if that blue skin never goes away?”
“It would be worth it if it got us home.” She spoke sadly and plainly, but didn’t turn around to face him. She didn’t want to risk glimpsing any more of the spell.
She was obviously right, but before he cast the spell Edward imagined himself covered in blue-silver. He would look like a fish-man with sharp teeth and gills on the side of his neck. He didn’t want to become a monster. What would Jenny say if she could see him that way?
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. He pictured a long-necked reptile. It changed into a circle with a foot inside of it. He imagined the fancily drawn number four, then the weird looking flower, then the boat. The boat shifted into a simple rectangle. Finally he imagined a clockwise spiral. To launch the spell he imagined Jenny seeing him transformed into a sea-monster. She was screaming.
He looked around, but didn’t see the pink rip in the air. No rift opened. A loud wind blew through the arch, whirling the sand around, but nothing came with it. They both began to wonder if the spell worked at all on that planet.
It did.
The caterpillar which came flying into the room was far larger than any of the specimens Edward had summoned when he was in Mia’s house. It barely fit through the arch. Had the dome not been such a monstrous structure, it could never have fit. As it was, being in such close quarters, they could smell its fur. They could feel the change in temperature when it drew near.
Luckily, it seemed to ignore Romana. The beast coiled itself in the air, just above Edward. It lowered its head down near him and began to bob up and down, waiting for orders.
Tentatively, Edward reached out and touched the monster’s side.
It jumped.
The head rose up and they could hear it crash into something high above them in the darkness. The monster made a deep and growling noise and then lowered itself back down again. Neither of them moved in the slightest as they waited for the giant to do whatever it was going to do.
When it was calm again, Edward said to the monster, “Take us home.”
Nothing happened.
“This isn’t working. There was no rift because it’s already here. And it doesn’t seem to follow your orders. It just defends you.”
“I saw it eat a bunny rabbit once. The rabbit wasn’t attacking me,” Edward said to her. His voice was very serious.
“I’m not a bunny rabbit.”
Edward looked at her and then at the monster, “You hear that, buddy? She’s not a bunny rabbit. Don’t hurt her!”
The monster didn’t respond one way or another.
“Well, so how do you get rid of him?”
“I cast the spell again and the rift opens. He -” It suddenly hit Edward. “Okay, so there’s no rift this time. What if when I undo the spell he’s just free of my control? What if he attacks us?”
“Will he follow you if you walk away?”
“I don’t know. I’d wager he would.”
They both thought for a few moments. Finally Edward asked, “What does your spell do?”
“I told you that’s -“
“No, really. It is imperative that I know our options.”
“I – I can make water. It flows from my mouth. Not just a trickle, but it can be like a river flows right out of my mouth.”
“How powerful is it? Could you wash him away?”
“I could wash a person away, but no, I don’t think it would do much to him.”
“And that’s your only spell?” Edward asked, with frustration.
“Yeah, honestly, it is. It may seem crappy now, but if we had spent a few more hours in the desert you would have thought it was the best spell ever!”
“Can you turn him to stone?” Romana sounded hopeful.
“I tried that on Earth, with the first one. It didn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“I have no idea! Now come on, we need a real idea.” Edward was beginning to sound annoyed.
“No, this is important. If we don’t figure out the rules, we won’t get anywhere. Does your stone-spell work on Venusian life?”
Edward remembered the two devils he had stored in the basement, “It worked on the devils.”
“Then it should work on the caterpillar. Maybe you made a mistake the first time? Did you miss?”
“No. I did not miss.”
“Try it again.”
“You know that every time I cast a spell I risk
turning myself into a sideshow freak. How many more spells do you expect me to cast today?”
“You want to have this guy following you around for the rest of your life? And how long does the spell last? What if in an hour or so he gets free and turns around and bites you?”
Edward nodded. She was right. The monster’s mouth was large and sharp. Edward could have fit inside this one, without even having to be chewed up. He had no choice but to use the magic. He was going to have to stop soon though. He reached for her shoulder and pulled her behind him. He didn’t want to accidentally get her in the spell.
Her skin felt soft.
He closed his eyes.
He imagined an inverted pyramid. He imagined a grey sun. He pictured a black dog. He remembered the shape Mandelesian had made with his fingers. He thought about the sound of running water pulling a rock away from the shore. Then he thought about Romana, and how terrible it would be if he accidentally turned her soft skin to stone.
It didn’t work.
Beyond the monster, pink sand had been replaced by stone. A table had turned hard and grey. The caterpillar was untouched.
“Damn!” Edward shouted. He jumped up in the air, and then tapped his two fists together in frustration.
“We need to figure this out,” Romana spoke harshly and soberly. “If this was a magic trick, if your master gave you this as a test, what would the solution be?”
There was a level of mocking in her use of the word “master.”
Edward noticed it, but at the same time she was right. What if he pretended that Dever had set all of this up as a test?
“Alright, if Dever asked me to solve this, I would be able to assume that there was a solution. Then it would be just a question of logic.”
Edward started to walk around. He looked more carefully at his monster, as if he expected to find a detail he hadn’t caught before. This was a very different side of him. Romana had seen Edward frightened and confused and maybe even brave… but now he was focused. He had an energy she’d never seen in him until that moment.
Magic Makes You Strange (The Brontosaurus Pluto Society Book 1) Page 11