by Brhi Stokes
Avilaigne made a strained noise as I took a sip of the drink, and I shook my head at her again. “Honestly, I think you’ve had enough.” I bit my lip. “This is going to be a problem for me,” I told Matthen. “I don’t really have the time to wait until she’s sober.”
“What do you need?” he asked, slinging an arm across the back of the booth behind me.
“Her help. I…” I paused. “I heard you got a visit from the Evisalon fixers?”
“Yeah, they came to get their trinket back from Av. Obviously, she didn’t have it.”
“Which is why you sent them in my direction? You know I don’t have it, either, Matthen,” I told him firmly. If I had these two to blame for my new guests, then I had every right to be frustrated with them.
Unfortunately for me, there was genuine surprise in his eyes, and my anger dissipated as he cocked his head to the side at me. “Huh? No, we just told them you didn’t have it. We told them the whole thing, from Avilaigne’s plan to your daring rescue.”
“Daring is hardly the word I’d use… And, well, they’ve asked for my help in retrieving it.”
Matthen laughed, the panels against his jaw arcing away from his face. “You agreed?”
“It’s hard to explain. They showed me what’s happening to their plane and…” I shrugged. “I said I had to go and speak to Natsuko for them. I didn’t promise them anything.”
“So what’re you doing here? Not that I’m complaining, Page…” He grinned, and I half-drowned myself in my mug to avoid it.
“Well…” I lowered my drink, glancing across the table at Avilaigne who was now resting her cheek against the wood, “I was hoping for some company. If Natsuko won’t speak to me, we’ll have to detain her. But I need an ace up my sleeve - something she isn’t expecting - if I’m going to try speaking with her first.”
“Avilaigne’s not in any condition to be doing much of anything for a bit. She won’t be sober enough to think about helping until tomorrow and no one wants to travel with the whale-sized headache she’ll wake up with.”
“Which shatters my plans,” I said with a grimace, downing more of the ale. The heat spread down to my stomach as I swallowed. “Bugger.”
“Not a problem. I’ll come.”
His words were so nonchalant that I nearly spat out some of my ale. “What possible reason could you have to help me?”
Matthen leaned towards me with a conspiratorial grin and I could smell the scent of alcohol on his breath. It was not unpleasant. “Because I’m a gentleman,” he told me, tapping the end of my nose gently with one finger. Something shifted over his shoulder, drawing my eyes away from his deep grey pair and I noticed the translucent wings behind his back curl and uncurl. He had two sets on either side, like a dragonfly.
“I, erm…” I blinked hard, swatting his hand away from my face. “All right. Thank you. Yes, we’ll do that.”
He sat back in his seat, hiding the wings and chuckling to himself.
“But we’ll need that scanner that Avilaigne had,” I added, mostly to interrupt his amusement. “I know the city we’re heading to, but it’s quite large and we need a way to track the amulet down. Grab everything around you when you wake up, you’ll need to find your body’s home and take a small book with your photo in it. It may take some searching to find it.”
“Yeah, sure. Then it won’t take me long to reach your house.” He stood. “Now c’mon.”
I joined him, frowning as I did so. “Just play along,” he whispered before he snatched me up by the back of the neck and began to drag me to the door. “Well put a little fight into it,” he urged.
I twisted and scrabbled to some degree, noting the way the other patrons just watched with dark smirks as Matthen dragged my kicking form out the door. Outside, he refused to let go of me.
“You’re in a rush?” he asked, and I felt my pulse increase.
“…yes… but why-”
His wings unfurled completely from his back, a larger set above and a smaller set below. A buzzing filled the air as they started to flutter, the movement turning them into nothing more than a pale blur. I was hoisted into the air, Matthen’s arms around my back keeping me aloft. We rose further and further up above the cobbled streets and thatched roofs, above the metal struts that held the train tracks. The ocean glimmered in the distance beneath the light of a full moon. To the north, the huge walls rose almost as high as we did, and I could just make out delicately carved towers behind it.
He smiled at me; this close I could see the tiny spines along the inside of his mandibles. “This is gonna be messy but, hey, that body you’re in is already dead, right?”
I swallowed hard. This was going to hurt.
“I’m glad you came here, though. I was thinking I’d never get to see you again.” His grip began to loosen.
I blinked at him. “Matthen…”
“Anyway, happy to help. I’ll see you soon.”
He let me go.
I had the strangest sensation of my layered dress inverting up past my face, blocking my vision entirely on my feet-first fall towards the ground. It was a great distraction from the dropping of my stomach as, for the second time in a very short while, I plummeted to my death.
**
My eyes flashed open with a start and I wrenched myself upright, desperately gasping for breath. Intense pain ripped through me as my bones slowly knit themselves back together. All I could remember was hurling myself from the roof of a building a few streets away from my own. I could not understand what had happened, why I was not in the last place whose name I had thought hard on before my body hit the ground. Everything hurt, everything was an agonising blur of terror.
Someone let out a yell of fright as I tumbled from whatever I had been laying on. I tried to pull myself up using the table, but it slid out of my grasp and wheeled along the hallway in which I had crumpled. I looked up to see a woman in some sort of uniform bearing a horrified expression as I staggered to my feet and onwards down the corridor. Some small part of me knew that I was in the pathologists’ lab, that these were the familiar hallways through which I had stepped dozens of times. It was ignored, however, as several more voices called out to me, and I started at a sprint towards the door.
The streets were a blur as I looked around for a familiar-coloured car and raised a hand to get the driver’s attention. I had to hope what I clambered into was a cab, as my mind raced with the memory of the fall and the sickening crunch my body had made on the street below. I rattled off what I thought was my address before curling up against the door.
I should have brought the pills with me. I should have been smart enough not to have jumped again so soon. No wonder I had failed to traverse planes. Had I simply plummeted down to my death to be wrought back from nothingness soon after? I could have sworn I remembered thinking hard on the word ‘Myrkdraw’ during my fall, but I was also certain that I had never left Earth.
The cabbie must have tried to get my attention several times because he looked rather unimpressed when I pushed myself upright and stared blearily at him. His face swam in my vision and I had to blink hard to wash it away. No, not a fixer, surely not. I thrust a few notes into his hand before tumbling out the door. Habit had me dragging myself up the right set of stairs and towards my flat without me having to concentrate fully on it. Partway there I reeled, slumping against the railing that overlooked the courtyard and desperately resisting the urge to vomit. I coughed and retched over the rails, clinging to them to stop myself toppling unceremoniously onto the ground. My grip loosened, however, and I felt myself slumping down onto the concrete.
“Woah, hey,” a voice nearby said. I felt someone place their arms around me, lifting me to my feet and steadying me as I swayed.
My mind whirled, the other person’s touch like fire against my icy skin, and I barely had the sense to notice that I wore no jacket in the cold evening. With a cry of fright, I tried to thrust myself away from the voice and the burning touch, trembli
ng from head to toe.
“Page. Page, it’s me,” the voice told me gently.
The world was still a swimming mess as I felt someone steady me, my back resting against the railing. A middle-aged man was staring into my face with concern. I blinked dizzily at him as he cupped a hand to one of my cheeks and gently swiped at the dampness there with a thumb.
“You jumped to get there, didn’t you?” There was sympathy in the voice, and part of me was surprised by it. The other part was trying desperately to figure out what had happened and what this man was talking about. “Take a breath, Page.”
For reasons I could not quite comprehend, I did as he asked: closing my eyes and drawing in a long, deep breath of frigid air. The pain in my body was still there, but nowhere near as alarming as it had been. My mind still raced, but my thoughts at least had coherency, now.
“That was my fault,” the man told me. “I’m sorry.”
I opened my eyes to look into his blue set. Grey? No, blue. I blinked the tears from my eyes as I tried to focus on what I was seeing and slowly began to realise that I could not. The hue and shape kept shifting back and forth in my vision. After a moment of intense staring, I let out a soft whisper. “Matthen?”
“There ya go.” He looped an arm around my lower back and led me in the direction of my flat. He even helped me fish out my keys and traverse the stairs up to the kitchen, before depositing me onto a stool at the counter. I sat there shivering, wondering what the hell had happened to put me in this state.
“Pills,” I said shakily, gesturing towards the kitchen cupboard. He fetched them for me along with some water, and I threw back several of them. I tasted blood along with charcoal but I hardly noticed the tang against my tongue as I drained the entire glass. My flat was miserably cold and I wrapped my arms around myself as I let the pills do their job. Cloth brushed against my skin and I found that Matthen had draped his jacket across my shoulders before taking a seat on the next stool.
“What…” I said.
“I got here quicker than I thought,” he explained to me, eyes focussed on mine. “As for you… I guess this is the first time you’ve died the same way going out as you did going in?”
It was hard to think straight, though my memory of heading to Myrkdraw was beginning to return. It had been silly to think that I had plummeted to my death and woken up back on Earth. I was not even sure if that was possible, let alone convinced that I could manage it. Shaking the thoughts from my head, I winced at the pain. That was right, I had jumped to get to Myrkdraw and then Matthen had dropped me from a height to return.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve asked you before I dropped you. I thought you’d say something… It’s a bit of a mindfuck doing it that way, coming back the same way you left. First time I did it, I wasn’t even sure I’d managed to jump properly.” He eyed me. “Not to mention your short time between jumps, right?”
I nodded weakly, fumbling for the laptop on the counter and opening it. I checked the date and time against the flights I had booked before the jump. They were tomorrow morning, which meant that I had time to sleep off this nightmarish feeling. I noticed Matthen eyeing the computer carefully as I typed and perused the relevant websites. His eyes were back on me the moment I turned to face him, however.
“Did you bring the…” I said, but Matthen was upending a backpack onto the table and I watched as various items fell across my kitchen counter.
“Woke up in his house. This is all I could find,” he explained to me.
I dug around with one hand until I extracted a few things: a wallet, some papers and - thank God - a passport. I glanced through the papers, stopping as I came to a handwritten note. A quick glance at the beginning told me that I did not want to read the rest. Instead, I pushed the wallet and passport towards Matthen and attempted to stand.
He helped steady me with a firm hand. “Look at me,” he told me gently. “Follow my finger with your eyes.” It was difficult, as his finger kept blurring in my view, but I managed. “Okay, good enough.”
“We’ve got more time than I thought,” I told him as he helped me walk towards the bedroom, “I’m going to sleep for a few hours and then we’ll head off.”
“More time before what?” he asked as he sat me down on my bed.
“Before the flight.”
He eyed me curiously for a moment, but I had already slumped down and closed my eyes. As I drifted off to sleep, I thought I heard him mutter, “But you don’t have any wings.”
**
Matthen’s eyes were huge as we stepped into the international terminal. He had behaved himself as we had moved through security and only spent a few seconds warily eyeing the scanner gates before stepping through at the behest of the staff. Thankfully, nothing beeped, and he was silent as I collected my keys and phone from the end of the belt and led the way deeper inside.
It was as we reached the main terminal that his face really lit up. Beyond the people and the cafe counters were a huge set of glass windows revealing the runway. He made a beeline for the windows, but I managed to drag him onto a seat at a nearby table so that we could at least eat while he watched the planes taxi. He did not say anything, but I could see the amazement in his eyes as one plane lifted off from the runway and took to the sky.
“Never seen one before?” I asked.
“Not this close. This is our transport? This is what you meant by ‘flight’?” He gawked and I hid a smile. It was nice to see him out of his element. After the rescue I had received last night, it was a small blessing to be the one in the know once more.
I left him to his thoughts as I collected breakfast from one of the many cafes. Still a little nauseous, I only picked at my food as Matthen stared out the window at the planes.
“Surely you’ve seen more interesting things than these in other planes?” I paused. “The dimension kind, not the winged kind, that is.”
He shrugged, dragging his eyes away from the window to look at me as I sipped my tea. “Well yeah,” he said, lifting his coffee to his lips and taking a sip, “but I’ve never been on one.” He wrinkled his face and dumped his cup back on the table. “What is that?” Beneath his disguise, I could see his mandibles quivering as he stuck out his tongue.
“Coffee. Awful, isn’t it?”
“Why did you give me it, then?” he complained.
“Because most people like it. Sorry,” I said, not bothering to hide my amusement. The smile felt awkward on my face after last night, as if it belonged to a stranger, but it was a relief nonetheless.
“What are you drinking?”
“Tea.”
“I like tea,” he told me, taking my cup. I let him keep it.
“Then we’ll get along just fine.”
I watched as he shovelled his food up with delight. From the state of Myrkdraw, I was not surprised that airport breakfasts had him excited.
Knowing we would not have time to talk in the confined space of the plane, I pushed some sausage around my plate as I gathered my thoughts. “Out of curiosity, what makes Myrkdraw so terrible?”
“The upper echelons,” he told me through a mouthful of bread.
“A class divide? Between the people with-” I paused, unsure how to word it. “The people who look like the people in my plane, and the others?”
“Good save, but what you meant is the ‘inferior’, the ‘affected’.” He shrugged. “Words don’t bother me.”
“Sticks and stones…”
“Huh?”
I waved away his question, and he shrugged.
“They’re rich,” he continued, “they have better technology - you saw the train - and they have really big walls. They also don’t want anything to do with us.”
“Then how was that woman outside the walls? The one whose body I inhabited. I think she’d been murdered.”
“Ah, sometimes they get hauled out to the dogs. That’s us. Often after committing crimes, or so I’ve heard. They don’t last long.” It would also explain
the woman I had inhabited during my first trip there, and why she had met her end in the sewers.
“Because your people murder them…?”
“Some do. I know it’s not great, but everyone outside the walls gets a little tetchy when it comes to the caged folks.” Having finished his food, Matthen pulled my plate towards him and began to demolish its contents, too.
“I see...”
We fell into silence until only the lukewarm coffee was left and our flight was being called for boarding. My companion calmed at that stage, observing everything with intelligent grey eyes as we lined up and boarded. I had arranged for business class, so we had a small area to ourselves and, in spite of what was on our tickets, I let Matthen take the window seat.
I had warned him about turbulence but he still glanced at me accusatorially as we hit a rough patch about three hours into the flight. He made up for this by flirting shamelessly with me, and then with the male and female flight attendants after I had put in earphones. Thankfully, discovering that there was a screen in the back of the chair in front of him seemed to give him something better to focus on. Even if he was more interested in figuring out how it worked than watching what was on it. Eventually, he found the music section and fell into quiet thoughtfulness as he stared out the window for the rest of the long trip.
**
The landing jerked me awake, and I knew I must have fallen asleep halfway through the flight. I also noticed that Matthen was looking at me, head cocked to one side.
“What?” I asked as people commenced futilely to strip off their seatbelt and reach for their cabin baggage, ignoring the fact that we had yet to taxi towards the terminal.
“You’re cute when you sleep,” he said, turning to look out the window as the plane slowed.
“Not really a word I’d use to describe myself,” I muttered as we waited. Thankfully, that was all he had to say on the matter.
Our exit was fairly smooth. I had had to check in a suitcase to avoid explaining to security exactly what an old iron device was doing in my carry-on, but the bags did not take long. Soon enough, we were headed for the train that would take us into the sprawling metropolis.