by A M Russell
We stopped for a break. Marcia climbed into the back. Janey was in the side seats right at the back.
‘Davey!’ Marcia snapped my attention away from the tussocks of greeny-black wire-like twigs; ‘Get the med pack. We must pack in some stabilisation shots in the next six hours or she’s done for.’
I grabbed the case from under the seat, and scrambled over. Marcia pulled Janey upright. She looked awful. Her skin was clammy and pale, her eyes were glassy and still red rimmed. Only her lips were pinky soft and normal. I reached out. ‘Don’t touch her!’ said Marcia sharply.
‘Why not?’
‘Time is tearing her apart. I can have contact with her for some reason that one day I will explain to you. But you could kill her with one touch!’
‘Oh my God…’ I opened the case up, as Janey focused on me for the first time in hours.’
‘David…. Why did you leave me there?’ she smiled, ‘I remember our date. Do you?’
Marcia gave me that look; ‘Just tell her something positive Davey.’
I handed Marcia the hypo case; ‘No idiot! Get it out for me. I can’t hold her up and do the injection on my own.’
‘Do you want me to do it?’
‘Yes. That would be better. Just make sure you put the vinyl gloves on first.’
We got it arranged. Janey slumped back in the seat. Marcia bent her arm into position to give me as clear a shot as I could. We found the vein, nice and clear. I pressed it in smoothly; held it steady, and depressed the plunger in one smooth action.
‘Cotton wool.’ Marcia took it from me and pressed down as I withdrew the needle. ‘Good work. When you’re clear of the sharp; get the hot water going. We’ll try some coffee and something sweet.’
‘Will it help?’
‘It will take the edge off the dull headache this is going to give her.’
‘What is going on Marcia? Why did she succumb and not the rest of us?’
‘It’s easy. She isn’t like Hanson. Or that bastard Rimmington!’
‘Egocentric?’
‘Precisely. You can divide them into a hundred bits and there’s still enough ego to go round. But Janey is far too single-minded to appreciate being two people at once. She has to find her counterpart self. Maybe we need to find a way of joining the two back together.’
‘I thought that all of us only existed as shadows of themselves in the cloud field. Isn’t it an unreal thing, honestly?’
‘If only that were true. No. it gets more real as we come closer to a final moment where it all stands or falls. What is happening will be resolved, like gravity resolves the act of falling.’
‘Janey….’ I said softly, ‘How do you feel?’
‘Huh… Davey; I guess I’ve felt worse at some point. But right now I can’t remember when that was.’ She tried to smile and then lay back on the seat again.
Marcia handed me a coffee. She helped Janey drink some of hers. I saw it then. Jared was all to his sister Janey. And Marcia loved Jared enough to give up everything back to Janey. And Janey herself, despite her terrified bewilderment, had steadfastly stuck to the plan. I found it difficult to say how I felt at that moment. Lonely, and strangely rejected. Reality itself would not tolerate my touch, even on her hand. With a start I found myself convinced of one thing. If we all survived this I would let her go. I was alone in the vast darkness of this experience; and she felt like the only light that touched me in any meaningful way. But it was a false dawn. I had constructed for myself a castle of dreams that was even more illusory than the visions of this place had been. I climbed back into the front seat, shocked by my moment of lucid thought. I had never thought of myself as part of the simple facts of other people’s lives. What am I thinking? Janey…..who really loved her like that?
‘Davey?’ Marcia caught me out again. I turned. Janey collapsed on the floor. I literally jumped into the back.
‘Tell me what to do?’ I knelt down a close as I dare.
‘I don’t know! It makes no difference now…..’
I took hold of her by the fabric on her sleeves, and flipped her over. Her lips were ashen. I couldn’t believe this was happening; had the drug worked enough? Marcia was frozen to the spot. ‘Marcia! Help me!’ But she shrank from Janey.
‘I can’t. My touch is affecting her as well now.’
I looked down at her. I had a choice. Take a chance; or watch her die. There was still one other who could carry out the choices she needed to make; but who could say where she was now? Perhaps this was the only way. Janey! I didn’t want to hurt her. Perhaps if Marcia had started to affect her, then just maybe it was the opposite for me? What if I was wrong?
I was there hesitating. Was this to save or to kill? Was I poison or salvation? Surely I could be her saving touch, as she had been mine!
Something was happening. Her eyelids trembled. Still I held off. Until the moment when I knew that nothing could be done, except that breath….
She was still… nothing happened. Her chest was not inflating. I listened. The drugs only worked to stabilise, they could not balance a system totally out of harmony with the timeline surrounding it.
I leaned into her. I tucked my arms around her, and then pressed my mouth around hers breathing gently into her mouth. She tasted sweet, like berries. I pressed her whole body against mine. It could only make whatever was happening go faster. There was nothing else to do. I breathed into her mouth again. Something happened. She flexed under me. A little resistance, a sudden tension or rigidity and then relaxation. I pulled back slightly. I traced my hand across her lips, feeling for the exhalation of a breath. I dipped my head and breathed into her once more… a third time. Something hurt in me then, an ache in my left arm that spread like fire. I felt her move. Her mouth moved against mine. The nails of her right hand dug into my forearm. She was gripping me tightly in some kind of death grip. I could almost felt the flesh puncturing. I sat up. She was stirring. Her strength was focused, her eyes rolled and opened. She took a huge breath in, gasping as if in shock. She was struggling to sit up from the floor of the cab at the back.
‘Marcia! Help me please.’ The pain was excruciating. But I didn’t want to force her hand from me.
Marcia lifted Janey’s shoulder until she sat up. I was trying not to cry with pain.
‘Janey… please. Let go. You’re hurting me. Please.’
But she was staring without seeing me.
‘Sister! Be calm,’ said Marcia to her, ‘we need to calm ourselves now.’
Janey’s head turned a little towards Marcia’s voice.
The light level seemed greater. Strong sun light gleamed into the cab. I looked towards the pain. Blood dripped from my arm into the floor. Janey’s grip at that moment ceased. She let go and withdrew her hand. I could move. It still hurt. The skin was broken. It was right in the centre of the first heart of the tattoo. Blood seeped out and fell from that point again. I saw the other nail marks. Crescent shaped dents in my flesh curving away; three more of them.
‘What shall we do?’ It was Marcia who spoke first.
‘Help Janey. Check her over. Pulse, blood pressure the lot.’ I pulled the large case from out under the nearby seating with my right hand. Marcia busied herself with the medical checks. I crawled up to the nearby seat and cradled my arm; I looked out into the sunlight. The landscape was glowing in the afternoon light. I looked towards the dashboard. The instruments were measuring twenty-two degrees outside temperature.
A few more minutes passed. I realised that it was the wrong temperature for the conditions we had been driving in. I turned, and then saw a large bush laden with orangey-yellow fruits, just near the window of the cab. I pressed down on the lever to move the front passenger seat forward a little and then pressed in the three buttons to open the side door.
I tumbled out onto soft grass. The scent of summer was around, and the sound of water running was somewhere nearby. I walked forward a few steps. I knew this place. I had dreamed of it. Like the day
by the pool in the little glade. This was the woodland and the glades and streams. It seemed part of Summerland.
‘How is it possible?’ Marcia was standing behind me. Her face was softened in astonishment. I turned. Janey sat on a seat inside the cab. She seemed to be staring at me, and her eyes were filled with wonder.
‘Am I dead?’ she said.
I went back to the cab; ‘No. look. Come, the grass is cool and lush here. It is a paradise. Another place. You brought us here Janey.’
‘I think it was you.’ She said and touched her lips with her hand. She stared at my face; ‘was it you?’
‘Yes.’ I said. She looked at me carefully. And saw how I clutched the left arm. ‘You’re hurt…. I hurt you.’
‘It’s alright Janey. We’re in a safer place than we were.’
‘You’re bleeding Davey.’ She reached towards me. I let her take my wrist gently in both hands and look at it.
‘I hurt you.’
‘No Janey. You helped me. It’s ok……’ I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, ‘You are alive. That is what matters right now.’
In this rich, warm afternoon we travelled. We had removed our ice suit inners and several other layers. Marcia in typically practical fashion drove the buggy deeper in to the land staying near the watercourse. This was a bubbling stream that moved roughly North West.
We stopped at four o'clock local time. Marcia checked the bandage round my forearm. Blood was seeping through slowly. Janey looked over my shoulder as Marcia redressed the wound. She looked away as I winced.
‘There you are!’ said Marcia, ‘and I can cook!’
The two women gathered wood for a fire. Marcia was adamant that we would not be spending a night here without a proper camp fire. She seemed quite cheered by the prospect. As the evening began to cool, we set up a small inner dome as a shelter. Marcia, with Janey’s help began to prepare supper.
It’s strange how the simplest things are the things that always stick in your mind. Janey came back from yet another wood gathering walk. She dropped a pile of sticks on the bundle already gathered.
‘We got enough now.’ said Marcia.
Janey held one of the fruits on her hand that she had picked from a nearby tree. ‘What is it?’ she seemed like a little girl pop eyed with wonder at all the things around us. She had not spoken much since earlier. And now was hesitant around me.
‘Davey?’ Marcia gave me a look I could not mistake Deal with This.
Janey handed me the fruit. It was orangey, with a slightly reddish bloom on one side. It looked very much like a nectarine. On examination it proved to be more like a small melon to judge by the firmest of the skin. I took out my hunting knife (which had been rather judiciously returned to me by George just before we left through the gates earlier today), and prodded carefully on the dimpled end. Suddenly the knife went in. we found it was hollow inside like a coconut. Indeed when I prised it apart a minute or two later it proved to be very like with an inner layer of firm sweet flesh. Janey fetched a camping mug. We emptied the fluid from the little gourd. It was fragrant and appeared cherry coloured in the fading light.
‘What shall we do?’ she asked me, holding out the cup.
‘Find out if it is safe, I suppose.’ I said, ‘What do you think Marcia?’
‘It must be alright. And how are we to know?’ Janey seemed to be determined to try it. Perhaps it was the intoxicating effect of being in this place so magically. If science could explain it, it could not remove the wonder we were all feeling, as the stars above began to burn in the sky, and the sun bled to death on the horizon of the world. The day was ending. And scents began to steal into our nostrils. The sounds seemed magnified and animated with a background of music from breezes moving the grasses and the bubble of the stream nearby.
‘Janey. I need some water.’ Marcia held out the small canteen.
‘Yes… yes of course.’ Janey handed me the cup.
I sat and swirled it round. In the fire light the surface looked like blood in colour, yet was clearly runnier than that. I was tired. I had not slept much back at home, and this small stolen interlude might be the only way to catch up on some rest. I set the cup on the ground beside me. I laid down on the ground sheet and watched the scene through half open eyes. Shadows of Janey and Marcia flitted around the fire. I thought then for a few minutes I was at home. I felt cold, and curled up. I supposed I must have dreamed then. It was only for a few minutes. I was in a very cold place there were confused images, and there was blood.
I jolted awake. Just as you do when you have the sensation of falling. I sat up slowly. Janey was coming back over to me.
‘Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ She sat down next to me and handed me a cup of black coffee, ‘Marcia’s stew will be about another half hour.’
‘Oh… ok.’ I clutched the cup for its scalding warmth.
‘Shall I?’ she held the mug of juice in her hand.
‘I don’t know. It could be alright. We didn’t find any fruits that were poisonous, but that isn’t to say….’
Janey sipped from the cup. I stared at her. She wasn’t about to take any notice of me whatever I said, so I might as well be quiet.
‘Good.. very good. Hey Marcia! These are good.’
‘Yeah,’ Marcia stirred the cooking pot, ‘but don’t spoil your tea.’
Janey grinned at me.
‘You asked Marcia just then?’
‘Of course.’ Janey seemed more like her normal confident self, ‘you don’t think I just go drinking something unknown, do you? After all, that would be so unscientific.’
‘Very.’ I agreed, and downed some more of the coffee; ‘This is definitely my brew.’
‘Do you want to try it?’
‘Not today. Perhaps another time.’
Janey stared outwards into the dark then; ‘what is it like, this boundary land? Everyone I asked can’t seem to tell me anything about it, except the thing about the compass needle spinning.’
‘I’ve not been any further than standing on the edge in daylight, well within sight of the rocks and normal landscape.’
‘You mean the egg things?’
‘Yes. They are sometimes called that.’
‘What happens if you go into that place? I mean, until you are out of sight of the normal land?’
‘I don’t know…’
Janey looked at me, then back out at the fading sky. ‘That’s it. That’s where you’re going isn’t it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘That is the truth.’
‘You are such an unconvincing liar. You do know that?’
‘I guess. Please don’t ask me anything else.’
‘I want to go there too.’
‘You know that you mustn’t.’
‘I can want it though.’ She seemed wistful, ‘It’s a strange thing. Now I’m here. It’s as if I’ve known it all along. Familiar almost. But not quite.’
I hunched over the remnant of the coffee, as if to suck the last bit of warmth out of the cup. Janey got back up and helped Marcia finish our supper preparations.
That small journey so quickly gone into memory was as happy as I ever remember being. The tension, if it existed at all between Janey and myself was swallowed up in wonder. The two of them, Janey and Marcia attempted campfire songs – Janey in a light clear treble and Marcia with a firm alto. I just listened and laughed, but I could not sing. That was for others… I had lost my lightness, and was diving down deep into what I knew must come. The second night as I fell asleep, it came…. Fear like the tide sucking at shingle. I supposed I must have prayed… that is to say I squeezed my eyes shut and begged for release from this. None came; only the imperative of the silent stars saying: “Look!” I looked upwards but did not see. I saw unknown constellations, a field of black strewn with silver flowers bright and rich as a Christmas card. I wanted to remember something normal; something from before. But it was
gone; there was the faded blueprint of my life against the bright illuminated script of this Summerland. I could not feel anything about it anymore. If I saw in my mind’s eye anything, it was only rain… falling thick and cold on a dull day. Then I looked out into this lush land a breathed it’s sweetness in and was glad I had been blessed with these moments. As I knew they would not come again.
We entered in late afternoon a smooth valley. Here there seemed to be no breeze. It was still, mellow and warmer than we had yet been used to. Marcia had furnished us three with water bottle and insisted we drink at regular intervals. I took a sip from mine, and stared ahead. I thought I saw movement. But it might have been a trick of the evening light. My senses told me it was not so.
Marcia slowed right down, and we continued along this grassy valley bottom. There was the feeling of being watched. But not by any unnatural presence. It was as if the trees themselves were observing us. I recalled then Andre’s story of the hunt, and wondered how loud the buggy must seem to the tribes people. The sides of the valley opened out and to our right the gushing of water makes the river’s edge even though we could not see it from our present position. We were on the wider plains.
We carried on a little further. It was time to find a place to stop. We made it to a rocky area, below which the river dug its course. In a small wooded glade we parked the vehicle.
Marcia sat with her hands on the wheel listening for a few minutes. I felt it too. There was something there still. Or rather someone. We left the buggy, and taking the canteens for water, went down to the river to fill them. Marcia straightened up first and froze. She stared at a spot a few yards distant. I followed her gaze. There was a person sat quietly on a rock. How long they had been there motionless, who could say? But there it was. I didn’t know them. The man turned his head very slightly. And as if on a signal at least twenty others appeared out of nowhere.