by Jeffrey Ford
That night I had no dreams, and when I woke in the morning to bright sunlight, I found a lit Hundred-To-One waiting for me in the ashtray on the table across the room.
14
The next day passed with a smooth perfection that only memories edited by time can achieve. I was free of doubt and fear, and Anotine and I spent every moment together from breakfast on. There was no talk of work. She procured a bottle of Rose Ear Sweet from the dark closet in the hall, and we set out for the edge of the island.
There, sitting on a small rise that gave a clear view of both sea and sky, we played at finding faces, animals, cities in the clouds while passing the bottle back and forth. My cigarettes appeared and she asked me for one. I told her those stories from Wenau that had nothing to do with Below. She was particularly interested in my role as a midwife and treated the idea of birth as some exotic concept, begging for me to recount in detail the looks and personalities of all of the children I had delivered.
“I’d like to go there with you,” she said.
“That would be grand,” I told her. “I have a house in the woods.”
“Can I witness one of these births?” she asked.
“You could be my assistant,” I promised.
She regaled me with stories of her associates, like the time Brisden, whose specialty was extemporaneous philosophy—a search for meaning through verbiage—had talked for two days straight and wound up his discourse at the exact place he had started. Or the time Nunnly and the doctor had gone fly-fishing off the edge of the island for a type of brightly colored bird whose migration path passed directly overhead once a year.
“They have been good companions,” she said. “I can’t think of what I would have done without them here. But they are so enmeshed in their work most days that at times it gets lonely.”
“I’ll be with you now,” I told her.
Then the Sweet made her conversation expansive, and she told me her theories of existence, the past and present and future, a mixture of mathematical and philosophical concepts that whirled time and God in a circular design outward from the center of the moment. Intellectually, I was confused, but the sound of her voice added to my intoxication, and I saw it all with great clarity, a multicolored, perfectly symmetrical blossom that spun like a pinwheel in the wind.
We shared a long silence before she spoke again. “I dreamt last night,” she said.
“Can you tell me?” I asked.
“Not now,” she said.
By the time the sun reached its apex, the bottle of Sweet was empty. We both slurred our speech slightly, and, if we weren’t drunk, we were no more than a drink or two from it. I lay back on the grass and she lay next to me. The alcohol gave me the courage to turn and kiss her on the lips. She was surprised but did not resist. She returned my kiss and put her arms around me. I rolled onto my back and she moved above me. Her hair, which was not braided that day, hung down all around my face.
She stopped, pulled her head back, and stared into my eyes. “I think I feel the moment coming on, Cley. The present is near,” she said excitedly. She dipped down to put her lips on mine again, but the connection never came. A high-pitched animal squeal sounded, and we froze. Anotine sat up, resting back onto my hips, and as her hair came away from my face, I saw the Fetch hovering above us.
The green beams shot from its eyes and into Anotine’s, but this optic union lasted only seconds before the head disengaged. From where I lay, I saw the Fetch weave in the air and then suddenly lose altitude, nearly smashing into the ground. At the last instant, it regained its weightlessness and flew off, uttering a horrific cry.
“What was it after?” I asked.
“Our touching of lips,” said Anotine. “It was hungry to know it.”
“Did we scare it?” I asked.
“No, the alcohol sickened it and made it lose control. I could sense, when we shared sight, that it was confused.” She leaned back and laughed triumphantly. Then she was off of me and running into the wood. “See if you can find me, Cley,” she called back. I heard her laughter trail off as she moved in among the trees.
As I walked the trails, peering down the rows of trunks and listening for the scuffling of leaves, I thought about Anotine’s reaction to my kiss. She hadn’t even known the term for it. It seemed that love and sex were much like cigarettes and food on the floating island—something that had not been woven into the basic design of the mnemonic world. I was responsible for infecting this dying island with my desires. There was much more to ponder along these lines, but just then I caught sight of the hem of her green dress flapping behind a far-off tree, and I began to run as silently as possible.
That night, back in her rooms, after having spent the evening lounging and kissing in the hidden garden beneath the tree of white fruit, we lay naked on the bed together. Our touching had increased to a fever pitch. I moved between Anotine’s legs and made ready to enter her. She was whispering the word Now, again and again, for it was clear that she equated her arousal with the discovery of the present. I was on the verge of penetration, when I heard another voice, much lower than hers, say from behind me, “Cley, what are you doing?”
The sound of this intruder so startled me that, in one fluid movement, I leaped off the bed and spun around. There was Misrix, wings parted, barbed tail dancing behind him. His yellow eyes glared from behind those ridiculous spectacles as he leaned back and brought his left hand up with all his might. It was too unexpected and swift for me to defend against. The blow struck me on the side of the face and sent me tumbling to the floor. I heard Anotine scream, and, from where I lay, saw her, through a blurry haze, crawl frantically from the bed and run out into the night.
The next thing I knew, the demon was helping me to my feet.
“I’m sorry, Cley,” he said, “but I needed to prevent you from burrowing any deeper into this illusion.”
“Interesting choice of words,” I said, as I rubbed the side of my face. “You almost took my head off.”
“You’re wasting time, Cley. I’ve been watching your progress, and I think you’ve lost sight of what you are here for.”
With his words, the thoughts of my neighbors at Wenau, which I had been successfully keeping at bay, flooded back to the forefront of my mind, and I knew instantly I was guilty as charged.
“These are not people, here,” he said. “You must remember that none of this really exists. You are risking the lives of so many for so much air.”
“You’re right,” I told him. “I will redouble my efforts to find the antidote.”
“Look,” said Misrix, “even if you do feel something for this memory woman, she is going to perish along with the island if my father should succumb to the disease. Think of that.”
It was a fact I hadn’t wanted to consider. I had been acting like a truant schoolboy, living, so to speak, for the moment. “You can trust me,” I said.
“There is another problem now,” he told me, shaking his head. “It was very difficult for me to get through here to you now. With the physical state my father is in, it creates a kind of interference in the process of connection between you and him and me. The worse he gets, the harder it will be to bring you out. If you stay, and we cannot find the antidote or if you take too long to find it, I may not be able to retrieve you. I believe you will perish with him.”
“I can’t leave now,” I said.
From outside we could hear the shouts of Anotine and the others. She had roused them and brought the party to my rescue.
“They will attack me,” said the demon. “I’ve got to be off.” He moved closer to me and put his hands on either side of my head, resting them there for only a second. “Good luck, Cley,” he said. He bounded to the back of the room and perched up on the window opening.
As Nunnly and Doctor Hellman burst through the entrance, Misrix leaped into flight. Anotine came in then, followed by Brisden, who carried an empty liquor bottle by the neck. She put her arms around me, and I saw the doctor run past us w
ith the wide-barreled gun he had used from the basket the day before to signal our desire to return to the island. Leaning his arm on the ledge of the window opening, he took aim.
“Don’t shoot,” I said.
“Why the hell not?” asked Nunnly.
The doctor fired and a pop sounded. The smoke flew back in the window and filled the room. I ran through the mist to look over the doctor’s shoulder just as a bright red puddle spread across the night sky. To my relief, I caught sight of Misrix’s distant silhouette against the flare. He was climbing toward the moon with powerful wing thrusts.
“Did you hit the filthy dog?” asked Brisden, still breathing heavily.
“I doubt it,” said Hellman. “I’m just glad I didn’t shoot myself. I’m not exactly a man of action, if you haven’t noticed.”
Nunnly and Brisden laughed.
I thanked them for coming to my rescue. Brisden inspected the welt on the side of my face and whistled. The doctor offered to leave the gun for me, and I accepted in order to seem as worried as the rest of them were.
“There are only two shells left for it,” he said. “I reloaded it for you, and I have the other one back at my place.”
“So, here we have it,” said Nunnly. “The monster has returned.”
“It was terrifying,” said Anotine. “Cley, you’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”
That is when I looked around and noticed that we were all standing there naked. The gentlemen finally left after offering assurances that we need only yell and they would come running. Anotine and I went back to bed, but she was no longer in the mood for experimenting. She fell asleep in my arms, and I was left to lie awake and consider how I was going to save everyone.
The following afternoon, we all stood, this time fully clothed, at the edge of the island a few feet behind the winch.
“It’s some bad business,” said Nunnly, pointing to where the ground had disappeared beneath half of the giant mechanism.
“Through the night, things have gotten worse,” said Brisden. “The rate at which the island is disappearing seems to have increased radically. What would you say, Anotine?” he asked.
She nodded. “No question about it.”
“I wonder if the monster’s visit has anything to do with this?” said the doctor.
“At this rate,” said Anotine, “we don’t have much longer. There is every indication that this process will continue to accelerate.”
I could see that what they were saying was true. The winch now literally teetered on the rim, the process of disintegration readily visible.
“Do you think Below will leave us here to die?” asked Brisden.
“I’m not counting on him,” said Nunnly. “He left us here with you, didn’t he?”
Brisden tried to smile, but the intensity of his stare fixed on the precarious circumstances of the mechanism showed his concern.
“We need a plan,” said the doctor, “and I’m sorry to say, one that might run contrary to our host’s prescribed protocol. Are you all in agreement?”
“You mean revolt?” asked Nunnly.
The doctor nodded.
“Count me in,” said the engineer.
“Anotine?” Hellman asked.
“On one condition,” she said. “That Cley becomes a full partner and is no longer viewed as a specimen.”
“What the hell,” said Brisden. “Now that I think of it, this place bores me to tears. As for Cley, I have no objections.”
The doctor and Nunnly agreed that I was now part of the group. I thanked them for their vote of confidence.
“You can reserve your thanks,” said Hellman, “until we tell you what happens when you go against the wishes of the island.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You mean Claudio?” asked Brisden.
The doctor nodded.
“We shouldn’t discuss this anymore right now,” said Anotine. “The minute our minds light up with these thoughts, the Fetch will be swooping down on us.”
“True,” said Nunnly.
“We discovered the other day that it can’t pry into your thoughts if you are drunk,” I told them.
“It wobbles like a one-winged bird,” said Anotine.
“Well,” said the doctor, “I suggest we begin drinking as soon as possible.”
“My place?” asked Nunnly.
“Sounds good,” said Brisden, who separated from the group and walked over to the winch. “Say good-bye to your favorite toy, Doctor,” he said as he reached his hand out and gave the heavy wooden base a slight shove.
That was all the force that was needed to send the huge thing sliding, slowly at first, and then with all its weight over the edge. The rest of the group joined Brisden at the rim to watch it fall. Plummeting with great speed, it punched through clouds and appeared to diminish in size as it went.
Nunnly clapped. “Tour greatest accomplishment since arriving, Bris,” he said.
“I feel now as if I had always wanted to do that,” said Brisden.
“I’m wondering if it will disturb the dream of the ocean,” said the doctor as it splashed into the liquid mercury, raising a geyser of silver liquid that must have been an eighth of a mile high.
“Could the disturbance awaken its sleep?” asked Anotine.
The doctor raised his eyebrows in contemplation of her question. “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps it might cause a nightmare.”
As far as I was concerned, a nightmare was more to the point. Events were now moving at an alarming rate, and a solution was nowhere in sight. I had forgotten for so long about the antidote that it was hard for me to again get my mind around the method of how I had even arrived on the island, not to speak of the absurdity of what I had meant to do there. I never thought that I would be thankful for being struck by a demon, but without Misrix’s visit I surely would have drowned in the unreal reality of the place. The worst complication of all was that I had fallen in love with Anotine, and there was no amount of reasoning that would change that. Women I could never truly have, like the theme of islands, seemed to be a recurrent motif in my life.
The winch had surfaced after its fall—an insignificant dot in the infinity of the ocean below. I could commiserate with its situation. We all watched as, slowly, it sank again beneath the silver waves for the last time.
“Who’s next?” asked Nunnly.
15
A stiff north wind had begun to blow by the time we left the edge of the island and headed back toward the village. As we passed through the wood, the leaves now fell in torrents, swirling around us and moving along the ground in green waves. It was as if the trees had determined that they should be completely barren by evening.
“It looks like rain,” said Brisden.
I gazed up through a hole in the now tattered canopy of branches and could see dark clouds passing in front of the sun. The day had taken on an autumnal feel, and that glorious light was slowly losing strength as the sky tinged toward a dull violet.
“Twice in the same week,” said the doctor. “I don’t recall that ever having happened before.”
“I remember entire years when it didn’t rain once,” said Nunnly.
Anotine moved in close to me, and I put my arm around her. I could feel her shivering slightly, and I knew it was not from the drop in temperature. She slowed her pace, and when the others had moved on ahead of us a short distance, she whispered, “You are here to help us aren’t you, Cley? You’ve come to save us.”
I stopped walking, surprised by her comment.
She looked up at me.
I nodded. “How did you know?” I asked.
“The dream I had two nights ago. In it you revealed to me the secret for restoring the island. I tried so hard to remember what you said, so that I could take it back from sleep with me into daylight. But the second I opened my eyes the words that formed the plan dissolved like the boundary of the island, crackling into nothing.”
“If I tell you now, the F
etch will come,” I said. “Wait until later, and I will tell everyone. When I do, you must support me, for the others will never believe what I will say.”
“I promise,” she said, and reached up to kiss me.
As we began again our journey toward the village, a light drizzle started to fall. We walked without speaking, but I wanted to remind Anotine that a plan was not a guarantee of success. While crossing the field to the steps that would take us to Nunnly’s rooms, we passed the Fetch, its green stare trained on a bird that lay dead on the withering grass. Not wanting it to notice us, we slipped quietly past, and once we were in the corridors of the terraced village, sprinted the rest of the way to the engineer’s quarters.
By the time we arrived, the drizzle had turned to a true rain. We came through the entrance to find cigarettes burning and quarts of Schrimley’s and Rose Ear Sweet opened on the table. Nunnly and Doctor Hellman drank from glasses while Brisden directly engaged a pint bottle of the notoriously bitter distillation known as Tears in the River. Two seats and two glasses awaited Anotine and myself. We took our places and Nunnly poured. When we had our drinks in hand, Brisden lifted his bottle toward us, and said, “Here’s to chaos.”
“Get the noise machine, why don’t you,” said Hellman.
Nunnly got up from the table, and as I followed his movement to the back of the room, I noticed for the first time that the walls were covered with diagrams of machines. The drawings of gears and hobs and axles rendered in a clear, clean, black ink upon pure white paper were startling in their complexity and beauty. Arrows curled around the designs and indicated directions of rotation and thrust. They covered every inch of the back wall and much of the side walls as well.
Off in the left corner was a drawing table, its surface tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. Next to it on one side sat a stand, holding jars and cans full of brushes, quills, knives, half-melted candles, and bottles of ink. On the other side was a mattress that lay directly on the floor with no box spring or headboard. I pictured Nunnly late at night, overcome by exhaustion from working away at the depiction of one of his mechanical masterpieces: the brush drops from his hand as he falls from his chair onto the waiting mattress.