by A. L. Knorr
"Really? Well, why don't we do that, then? It might be better than using your experimental prototypes…"
"It'll cost you a lot more to go through her, trust me." Eohne pulled her own shoulder sack over her head and headed for the door. Jordan followed.
"What will it cost me?"
"I don't know, you'd have to figure that out with her, but believe me, it wouldn't come cheap. Just like your friend’s healing won't come cheap." Eohne climbed back down through the hole in the rooty overhang.
"And you?" Jordan called down through the hole. "What'll it cost me to use your messenger bugs?"
Eohne peered up at the girl she was rapidly beginning to like. "Nothing." She grinned. "You get to send a message to your father and I get to test my prototypes. It's…" she frowned, thinking. "What do they call it in English…?"
"A win-win?" Jordan supplied.
"Exactly." Eohne disappeared.
"Well, alright then," Jordan said and climbed down through the hole. “Let’s do this.”
Jordan followed Eohne back the way they'd come. Seeing the people harvesting fungus in the treetops made her recall what Eohne had said about them. "You said they’re inmates," Jordan said, tripping over a root as she gaped upward into the canopy.
"Yes." Eohne picked up the pace as they hit the trail and headed back toward the waterfall.
"What did they do?" Jordan jogged to catch up to the long-legged Elf.
"Who knows?" said Eohne. "All kinds of things."
At the top of the stairs near the clearing where Jordan had first encountered Sohne, Jordan stopped and looked back over the scene, her eyes continually drawn upward by the movement in the canopy. "Why do they look so expressionless?"
"Hurry up," Eohne called from the cave entrance leading to the waterfall. "We don't want to be on the other side when darkness falls and its already late.”
Jordan jogged to catch up to the Elf. "Why, what happens after dark?"
"Same thing that happens on Earth, I imagine." Eohne's voice echoed through the cave as the two women passed through the damp rocky tunnel. "Predators come out."
"Harpies?" Her mouth went dry and her stomach heaved at the thought of it.
"No, they don't come in here. They can't maneuver in tight trees. But there's plenty of other beasts to worry about."
"Such as?" Jordan began, but then stopped. "Nevermind, maybe it’s better that I don't know. How far do we have to go?"
"Not far. There's an open glen less than an hour's walk from here that works for inter-Oriceran messages; should work for yours, too."
The sound of the waterfall grew loud as the women passed through the cavern. The water opened for them and closed behind them as they descended the invisible ramp to the river's edge. Eohne went first, passing over the river, looking like she was hanging in midair. It was then that Jordan noticed Eohne had a curved blade in a sheath strapped to her back. Jordan's hand went involuntarily to Sol’s knives, which she still carried at her hips. They were supposed to make her feel secure, but she couldn't help but feel unsettled by them. Just having them meant there was a possibility she'd have to use them. Not a happy thought.
"I'll never get used to this," Jordan muttered as she looked down through her feet at the rapids below her. Vertigo swept over her at the bizarre visual and she stopped for a moment to close her eyes. She breathed a sigh of relief when her feet struck land again. Eohne was already ahead in the woods and Jordan jogged to catch up.
"You were saying?" Jordan prompted as she matched Eohne stride for stride. The Elf set a brisk pace and Jordan's heart pounded steadily.
"I wasn't saying anything." Eohne tossed over her shoulder.
"About the inmates. Why are they so expressionless?"
"Oh, them. People bring us their criminals, we befuddle them and put them to work." She shrugged. "It's pretty straightforward."
"Befuddle?"
"A kind of magical stupor. We call it gnashwit."
"So, that's what Toth was talking about," Jordan mused.
"Who?"
"The Nycht who brought me here. He said people go into Charra-Rae and don't come out."
"Oh. Yes."
"So, people bring you their criminals and, what? You try them and sentence them to years of labor?" Jordan moved in behind Eohne as the trail narrowed and became lined with thick ferns. They brushed back against Eohne's long legs and thwacked Jordan in the thighs. The fronds were so thick it almost hurt.
Eohne laughed. "No, it doesn't work like that."
"How does it work?" Jordan slowed a bit so the ferns would swing back without smacking against her.
"Gnashwit is permanent. And there is no trial; at least, not here. If someone has been brought here, we assume a trial has already been done."
Jordan stopped for a second in surprise. "How do you know for sure they are even criminals?"
"I don't know. It's up to Sohne. I'm not really involved with the gnashwits." Something in Eohne's voice gave Jordan pause. She sounded uncomfortable, defensive.
"You don't agree with it?" Jordan guessed. The thick ferns ended, the terrain became soft and the trees became more widely spaced. Jordan fell into step beside Eohne, looking over at the Elf. She hadn't answered yet. "Eohne," she prompted.
"Hmmm."
"You don't agree with it?"
Eohne glanced at Jordan, her dark eyes troubled. "I didn't want her to use the magic yet. Not until I could reverse it."
Jordan's brows shot up. "You invented gnashwit?"
Eohne nodded. "I didn't know it would get used this way." She sighed. "I guess it’s better than the inmates getting executed. Isn't it?"
"I don't know," said Jordan. "What's it like?"
"I have no idea. It doesn't seem so bad from the outside." But the look on Eohne's face said she wasn't so sure. "They basically live the same day over and over again. At first when they come in, there are questions and some of them seem really traumatized. Eventually they become docile."
"What did you invent it for?"
"Originally, I was trying to make something that would help ease the emotional problems that happen after battles and other horrible experiences."
"PTSD," supplied Jordan.
"What?"
"We call that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."
"That's a good name for it," Eohne chewed her lip. "Well, either way, it turned out to be far too powerful for that. It seemed to take away all memory and personality–not to mention language, social skills and powers of deduction and reason."
The ground began to rise and Jordan soon found herself panting from the effort of the climb. "So gnashwit basically makes them into a vegetable."
"Not quite. They do what they're told and they only have to be told once. When they get inducted, they're instructed on how to harvest the fungus and what kind of a schedule to work on and away they go. Never to deviate from it for the rest of their lives."
"That's horrifying," said Jordan, taking deep breaths. "But I still don't know if it’s worse than execution or not."
"I know," said Eohne, not yet out of breath. "Sohne likes it, though and what Sohne wants, Sohne gets."
"Couldn't you still invent a reversal?"
Eohne frowned. "I've tried and failed so many times, I can't even tell you. Sohne has got me working on other things now, so I haven't had time." They crested a hill and a glade opened up before them. "Here we are." The women stopped at the edge of the clearing. Jordan took several deep breaths to calm her heart.
The glade was unremarkable, just a wide oval of grasses and wildflowers at the crest of a hill. After a moment’s rest, they continued to the very top. A few stars appeared in the dim evening sky, their patterns utterly foreign to Jordan. Eohne took off her bag and held out her hand for the one Jordan carried. Jordan handed it to her and the two jars clinked against one another.
Eohne reached into the bag and pulled out a little sack. She upended the sack into her hand and a small brown bean tumbled into her
palm, no larger than a coffee bean. She handed it to Jordan. "When I say, you need to swallow this."
"What is it?"
"A donisi pill."
"What will happen to me when I take it?"
"Nothing. It just needs to know where you want to send your message. When you swallow it, I need you to say your father's full name and his date of birth; include the hour and minutes, if you know them. Don't say anything else, or you'll dirty the frequency."
"I have no idea what hour he was born."
"That's okay, it probably won't need it." Eohne took out what looked like a smooth stone cylinder and held it. "Okay, go ahead and swallow it." She held up a finger and gave Jordan a warning look. "Don't speak until I tell you and just answer what I ask you."
Jordan nodded and her belly gave a little squeeze of anxiety. She put the brown pill into her mouth, but before she could swallow it, it slid to the back of her throat and halfway down her esophagus. Jordan clamped a hand over her mouth and tried not to cough. Her eyes bulged and she stared at Eohne; she felt like she had a marble stuck in her craw. She reached out and grabbed Eohne by the arm, squeezing hard. Fear clutched at her heart. This couldn't be right, something was wrong.
"It's okay," Eohne said. "I know it’s unpleasant. Focus on my eyes."
Jordan's teal eyes flew to Eone's black ones and she sucked in a breath through her nose.
"What's your father's full name?"
Jordan tried to say, ‘Allan Declin Kacy,’ but the words vibrated in her voicebox and went no further; nothing came out of her mouth. The vibration buzzed in her neck and Jordan squeezed her eyes shut at the horrible feeling.
"It's almost over," said Eohne. "When was he born?"
Again Jordan tried to speak–‘October 11, 1965’–but the words backed up in her vocal cords and travelled no further than the blockage in her throat. A wave of nausea swept over her and the pill slid up to her mouth. She spat it out and Eohne caught it in her hand. Jordan bent over coughing, her hand at her throat. "Ow," she rasped.
"I know. I'm sorry about that," said Eohne, popping the lid off the stone cylinder and dropping the pill inside.
"You could have warned me," Jordan croaked. "That was awful."
Eohne handed her the waterskin. "I find it’s better if we just get it over with."
Jordan snatched the waterskin and glared at Eohne. She upended the bag and took long swallows of water. The feeling of having a marble lodged in her neck began to ease. "What do you do with the pill?"
Eohne held up the cylinder. "It goes in here to dissolve."
"What's in there?"
"Just water." Eohne shook the cylinder and handed it to Jordan. "Hang onto that for a second." She rifled in her bag and pulled out what looked like a homemade syringe: A long needle attached to a hollow glass beaker with a plunger inside, depressed and ready to draw a substance into the belly of it.
Jordan shivered at the sight. "I hope you know you're not bringing that thing anywhere near me."
Eohne laughed. "Don't worry, it's not for you." She took out the first jar of bugs and handed it to Jordan. "Take this. Give me the cylinder." Jordan switched items with her and watched as Eohne took the lid off the cylinder and stuck the needle inside. As she pulled the plunger upward, a glowing neon green liquid filled the beaker.
"I thought you said that was water," said Jordan.
"It is, but now it has your vocal vibrations in it. Unscrew the lid and hand me one bug at a time." Eohne finished drawing up the liquid and dropped the cylinder onto the grass at their feet. She held out a hand. When Jordan hesitated, she laughed. "They don't bite."
Bracing herself, Jordan unscrewed the lid and took out a glass ball. "Ugh," she shivered as the thing sprouted legs in her hand. She dropped it into Eohne's palm. Eohne inserted the needle into a pinhole in the belly of the bug and injected a small amount of the green liquid. The center of the bug turned green. Eohne lifted it into the air and let go. The bug hovered there, its legs crawling slowly. Jordan watched, fascinated, as Eohne repeated this with every bug, until there were two dozen green balls with legs hanging in the air just above their heads. Eohne put the cylinder and the syringe back in the bag and straightened.
"Do you know what you want to say?"
"Uh," Jordan froze. She hadn't actually thought about it. What can I say to my father? She asked a simpler question of Eohne. "How are these bugs going to deliver the message? I mean what does it look like?"
"They move together to make lines of light between them," the Elf answered. "You should think fast, because the frequency won't hold forever. Tell me when you're ready and speak clearly when I give you the signal."
"Ack! Um, okay…" Jordan closed her eyes. Allan is going to freak out when these weird glass balls show up and make lights, but it’s too late to turn back now. She nodded to Eohne.
"Archi," said Eohne to the bugs; the word was sharp and loud. She gestured for Jordan to proceed.
Keeping things as simple as she could, Jordan dictated her message uneasily. She wasn't so sure this was a good idea anymore. What if those things give my poor dad a heart attack? She finished and nodded to Eohne that she was done.
"Telos," barked Eohne and the bugs shot up into the air and zipped off so fast Jordan hardly had time to register what was happening. She craned her neck in search of them, but they were completely gone from view.
"How will they find him?"
"They'll home in on your father's frequency and find the nearest portal. They'll ask him to confirm he is Allan Declin Kacy before delivering the message."
Jordan covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes widened as a flood of new questions came to her mind. What if Allan isn’t alone? What if the bugs find him when he’s with somebody and he finds out about the portal in our backyard? Scientists and the press will be crawling all over our place; it’ll be my father's worst nightmare. But then, what if he is alone and they scare him out of his wits? Jordan felt her armpits grow damp as the impact of what she'd done began to hit home.
"Are you okay?" Eohne asked, her brows drawing together with concern. She put a hand on Jordan's shoulder.
"Call them back," Jordan croaked. "This was a bad idea."
Eohne's brows shot up. "I can't! There is no reversing them once they've been given a message. Why? What's wrong?"
Jordan couldn't find the words to express the anxiety that had taken root in her gut. She closed her eyes and put a palm to her forehead. A wave of nausea passed through her. For better or worse, Allan would be getting a very freaky visit from an alternate universe.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In spite of her exhaustion, Jordan tossed and turned all night, wondering how long the bugs would take to find Allan, how he might react, what he might do. She comforted herself with the thought that at least he would know she hadn't been kidnapped or murdered–that she was alive and had intentions of getting home as soon as she found her mother; or as soon as is reasonable, anyway. Jordan had resisted the urge to explain through the messenger bugs and kept her words as simple as possible. Too much explaining would just lead to more questions and more worry for Allan. Or maybe I should have explained more? Maybe such a simple message would leave too much room for doubt that the message was some kind of sick joke. Why didn’t I add some secret code word or phrase, something only he and I know, that would prove it was me who sent the message? she lamented.
Peace, Jordan. She took deep breaths and began to count sheep. She focused on the sound of chirping insects and other nocturnal creatures. She heard Eohne breathing heavily on the loft below her and worked to match her breathing to the Elf's.
Just as Jordan was beginning to drift off to sleep on a cot on the highest loft in Eohne's hut, a fresh wave of questions revived her. When the messenger bugs get back, should I use them to send a message to my mother? She could recall her exact birth year easily because it had been inscribed on the family mausoleum: June 19, 1967. But what if I’m wrong about my mother and she is
dead? What would the bugs do then? Hang in front of the mausoleum asking for Jaclyn Peyton Kacy until the groundskeeper comes along and has a heart attack? Jordan flopped over onto her belly and sighed. But her mother was alive. She could feel it. She believed it with everything inside her. It was too weird, her mother disappearing while wearing the locket. But then, how had Maria gotten the locket? My mother had to have come back to make that possible and if my mother did come back, she would have come home. On and on it went, each thought chasing another on an endless merry-go-round of insomnia-fueled mania. Or was it the mania that fueled the insomnia?
***
"You didn't sleep," said Eohne from the doorway, as Jordan made her way slowly down the vine ladder the next morning.
"Did I keep you awake?" Jordan's jaw creaked with a yawn as her bare feet found the hard-packed dirt floor. Her blouse was untucked and hanging out like a wrinkled nightshirt. Her indigo vest was undone, the leather thongs dangling and her stockings were hung over her shoulder. Her hair stood up like it had been teased by a monkey.
"No. You just look like you were up all night." Eohne left the door open and crossed the small space. She had a handful of greenery in her hand. She pulled down a mortar and pestle and began to tear the tender leaves into the bowl. She eyed Jordan, watching her grind at her eyes with her fists. "I have something that will help."
Jordan gave a second jaw-cracking yawn as she dragged herself to the door where her boots, knives, sheath and the tattered remains of her cloak were piled on a chair. She began to put herself together, slowly, with eyes at half-mast. "Is it coffee? Please say you have coffee."
Eohne bruised the leaves with the pestle and put them into a ceramic cup. She added springwater from a jug and watched as the water turned green from the leaf juice. "Sohne likes coffee," said Eohne. "Brings it in from goodness knows where. I never acquired a taste for the stuff. Too bitter for me."
Jordan plopped down on her butt to lace up her boots. "Will she share?"