by Dia Reeves
A hiss, as of pain, from the group. “We don’t speak that name,” Lillane the abductor said.
“Why not? We’re kin, aren’t we? Isn’t that what you said when you tried to kidnap me?” Jimi struggled to shape his mouth around the unfamiliar syllables. “Why keep secrets from me, especially about my own mother?”
A hesitation among them, an unspoken conversation.
“I’ll take care of it.” Lillane hustled Jimi away from the others, down a different tunnel that opened abruptly into a space full of fierce sunshine.
Because of their bloody history, Jimi expected to be ambushed and beaten—had resigned himself to it—but Lillane only coaxed him gently toward the light.
“Up above, you’ll find the speaker and the answers you seek.”
Jimi released his wings and flew up and out, panting for breath; it had been much easier to breathe underground and much cooler. The blistering heat made him feel feverish.
What if Jimi was back in Portero, with a fever? In Alexis’s home, and she was feeding him bone broth and ginger ale while he dreamed all this. What if he got sick here? Did Fiamma know about bone broth and ginger ale? He should have called Alexis to help Ophelia.
Should have. Should have. Should have.
Jimi hovered, staring down on a landscape he’d seen many times before: the fiery rivers, the twisted trees, the land pockmarked with volcanic craters. Like the one he’d flown out of—not a mountain then, a volcano. A wide, natural ledge followed the rim of the crater where twelve people sat at an equal distance from one another. Full-length, double-sided mirrors mounted on stands stood before them; they stared at themselves without blinking. Maybe admiring their red eyes, their lack of stitches.
“Jimi. At last.”
Not Fiamma. Some gray-haired man waving him down.
Jimi landed before him, the speaker, presumably. None of the others paid him the slightest attention.
The speaker made Jimi aware of how tall everyone else had been. Tall like Jimi. The speaker was no higher than Jimi’s waist, chest sunken, wings stunted as if they hadn’t developed correctly. Eyes impossible to look at, full of burning light, like the sun. Jimi blinked away purple dots as he lowered his gaze.
“I’ve spoken of this day many times,” the speaker exclaimed. “Of your homecoming. The All Seeing revealed it to me so clearly, and now it has come to pass.”
The speaker hugged him, and Jimi decided he didn’t mind.
“Lillane said you would talk to me.”
“Of course. About anything you like, but come. I must continue my prayers, and you won’t be able to stay long on the surface. The air is so poor on this world.”
Jimi followed him around the rim to one of the seated seers. He was rapt as Narcissus, only he wasn’t looking at his own reflection like Jimi had thought.
The glass revealed the same blasted scene that stretched before them, a window rather than a mirror. Except, in the glass, the dead trees were alive and budding with dark purple flowers. The cracks in the earth had either sealed completely or were full of water instead of fire. The sun, that even now burned their skin, was conspicuously absent.
Intense light shot out of the speaker’s eyes into the mirror with such force that it flipped on its stand; the speaker’s light spilled across the landscape directly before them. Altering it. The sun seemed slightly dimmer. Or maybe the side effect of staring into the speaker’s white hot eyes had made everything dimmer.
“Take these.” The speaker handed him a pair of tinted goggles. “Young eyes are so vulnerable. I often forget.”
Jimi took the goggles, feeling foolish since he was the only one who seemed to need them. The mirror was behaving like a real mirror now, so he used it: adjusted the goggles, rubbed at the black tear tracks all over his face.
When had he cried? In Ophelia’s house? He couldn’t remember. Hadn’t even been able to enjoy the slow drip of his own gothic tears.
“What’s all this for? These mirrors and things?”
“We’re making this world more hospitable so that we can spread out and truly be at home here.”
“Is this how you got rid of the sun in Portero? With mirrors?”
“No.” The speaker sounded surprised to learn that Jimi knew something of their history. “Just as there is more than one reality, there is more than one way to change it.”
“How is it possible? It’s hard enough to get up in the morning and change clothes, let alone change reality.”
“Do you find it hard? Changing someone’s mind? Manipulating a situation to benefit your own desires? Traveling from one reality to another? How hard is that for you?”
Jimi thought back over his life. “Not hard at all.”
“The All Seeing gifts us with true sight, the ability to see not just existing realities but possibilities as well. The step from possible to real is a small one.”
The speaker circled to the next mirror along the rim of the crater. His deformed wings working overtime just to propel him forward; as hot as it was, Jimi didn’t mind the air conditioning.
“Why do y’all rip out your eyes then, if you value sight so much?”
“We are born blind or with diseased eyes that must be removed; the All Seeing alone provides true vision. As a vessel, you are privileged, were given true sight at the moment of adulthood. For the rest of us, the gift is not free, but now that you are here, many more of us can afford that blessed vision.”
“You make me sound like currency.”
“Beyond price.”
Even with goggles, Jimi didn’t like to look into the speaker’s boiling eyes, and when they reached the next mirror, he stared at it instead.
“If I’m so special, why’d Fiamma leave me behind?
The speaker hesitated, at war with himself. “We do not speak of those who have passed out of the All Seeing’s regard, but for you, because of your link, I will speak freely. This once. When the parents are no longer able to conceive, the All Seeing embraces them, feasts on their light. But Fiamma wasn’t allowed such a glorious retirement. She was deemed unworthy.”
“Why?”
“No one knows. I was in a similar position as a child. A vessel, but too ugly to attract mates. I should have gone to the All Seeing as well, when I came of age, but it wouldn’t have me in that way. Instead I was called on to be its voice, to speak its will into being. Everyone has a place, a purpose, but for Fiamma, we have no use. The All Seeing turned away from her, and so must we all.”
Jimi didn’t understand all of what the speaker had shared with him, but he had learned one thing—he was alone here too.
“Don’t feel discouraged. You are among family. Of some distance, but still connected. We’ve waited a long time for you. Why did you resist it so?”
“For years, I thought I was being haunted; I didn’t know about all of this or what I really am.”
“A blood link would have made explanations easier. We did the best we could.”
Before them, a distant volcano erupted—with hideous cherubim instead of lava. In the mirror, that image had been replaced with a gentle series of hills and the cherubim were nowhere to be seen.
“Blood link?”
“A familial bond that makes communication, especially from within, much easier.”
The constant pressure. The sensation of not being alone in his own head. “That was you?”
“Not me personally; Lillane tried and others as well, but as no one here is close enough to you in blood, the effect was weak. We did try. At night when your mind was open, or when you managed to step outside of time where such connections are easier. Or when you were intoxicated. When we couldn’t reach you directly, we sent delegates.”
“Like helibirds? With sharp, diplomatic talons?”
“We used what was available,” said the speaker, too busy filling the mirror with eyelight to apologize. “Like your bee. We tried, through it, to explain our need, and we thought we had succeeded, but when we sent a person
al escort…”
Jimi stared at his feet, remembering his crazed, unnecessary attack.
“That you would turn on your own kin in that way, use your stingers against kin…” The enormity of Jimi’s behavior seemed to overwhelm him. “We thought your mother must have reached you and poisoned you against us.”
“I think she did try. To reach me, I mean. I heard a woman on the phone. She sent escorts for me too. These ugly, baby things. They talked about taking me to her, but mostly they wanted to eat me.”
“Nibblers,” said the speaker darkly as the seer flipped the mirror and released the light. “We often consider possibilities that do not include them.”
“Is that what happened to Fiamma? You imagined her out of the world, or pushed her out. The way I was pushed out.”
The speaker winced. “We didn’t do anything to her. We can’t.” He stopped at a new station. “To engage with her is to acknowledge her existence.”
“Am I a vessel? Since I have a soul?”
“I don’t know that word, but your light is why we have been calling you home.” Light shot from his eyes and filled the mirror. “The others are dead or not yet ripe.”
“So what’s my purpose?”
“We brought you here to feed the All Seeing.” As if that was the greatest aspiration of all time.
“Feed him what?” An uneasiness had taken root in Jimi’s gut. “Steak? I cook a mean steak.”
“Your light, Jimi. Or, if you prefer, your soul.”
Chapter 28
After Jimi’s talk with the speaker, he dropped back through the crater where Lillane waited to escort him to his new quarters. Past the huge eyeball building, back through the tunnel and into what Jimi thought of as the city. Flew past the skyscrapers and into another tunnel high up the volcano. It led to a bare room, walls striated with rock and something softer, like clay. Running water fed into a natural pool at the center. Lillane called it the purification room.
“Anything we feed to the All Seeing must be pure.”
Jimi toured his new room, mulling over the absurdity of being made pure. He ached for his duffle bag. He always sat it in the corner when he swapped homes so he’d have something familiar to look at—that was the ritual. Here all he had was Lillane, who was focused on him with an intensity that Jimi needed to acknowledge.
“I’m sorry I killed your friends. I didn’t understand they were trying to do me a favor. I should have let them. Things would have turned out differently for…for everyone.”
Lillane’s stitches gave him a wounded appearance, even as he waved the apology away. “You’re here now and after the All Seeing consumes your light, it will be reborn in our eyes. I will see.” He seemed amazed. “I never have before.”
“I guess it could be worse. My whole body could be on the menu.”
“It is.” The intensity made sense now. It was hunger. “The All Seeing eats your soul, and when we receive true sight, we eat your flesh—that is the ritual.”
“I do like me a good ritual.” Jimi could only laugh. He was sure that was the sound he was making. Laughter. A chill was growing in his skin, as though death had already begun.
“Maybe it’s genetic.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Several times a day, Lillane and a handful of seers with stitched eyes, came to bathe Jimi in the heated pool. Gracile fish with billowy fins lived in the water. So did anorexic jellyfish; they slithered along the surface or formed Gordian knots at the bottom of the pool for reasons unknown. While seated, the champagne-clear water came to Jimi’s chin. Easy to relax in the water, but when he did, the fish would nibble his feet.
He had to be careful.
The seers remained above on the rock and scrubbed Jimi with long brushes that made his skin burn. While some of them scrubbed, the others…prayed? Sang? They bathed him like this several times a day, but only fed him once a day.
At the first feeding, Jimi asked Lillane if they were feeding him people’s souls, and when he said no, Jimi believed him. The light was as bright as a soul, but yellow rather than white. Jimi had witnessed seers scraping the glowing limpet things from the walls and mixing them in bowls. Glow paste, Lillane called it, but Jimi preferred to think of it as light rather than bioluminescent glue. It was tasteless, but filling, which was great since that was all they fed him.
The seers, on the other hand, ate what they wanted. Nuts and fruit. Meat—sometimes cooked, sometimes raw. For Jimi, such treats were off limits. Jimi was starting not to care, and only ate the paste out of habit rather than hunger.
After he’d been fed, Jimi was allowed to wander. Sometimes he visited the animals, mostly herds of large ugly birds, like bald ostriches, that existed only to be eaten.
Like Jimi.
Sometimes he visited the children, the vessels whose souls weren’t ripe enough to be eaten. Some had brown or yellow eyes instead of red. Some had slitted pupils, like lizards. Their wings had been excised at birth, Jimi was told. To make them docile, Jimi was told. They couldn’t speak or write or talk. They didn’t play. There was nothing in the pen to play with. Except each other. But they didn’t seem to know that. Just paced or sat and rocked in place. They were cataclysmically insane. Like Jimi would have been if Fiamma had not abandoned him. Jimi used to find comfort in that. Now, as with food, he only visited out of habit.
Sometimes Jimi visited the temple on the lowest level of the volcano. That’s what the eyeball building was—a temple. Made entirely of eyes; Jimi had asked. Some of the eyes were a thousand years old.
No one ever went inside the temple. It was forbidden. Instead, the seers would pray-sing before the temple and flash dim lights most of them couldn’t see to form pretty patterns on the rock walls.
Jimi preferred to stay in his room where he spent most of his time pinching dull-colored clay off the wall in his favorite corner and shaping it into bees. Sometimes Jimi wondered if he’d gone as insane as the other vessels, trapped in the pens, but it was easier not to think.
Jimi pinched more clay from the wall to make a new bee, and a red eye filled the small hole he’d created. The eye rolled in his direction.
Were the seers spying on him? Peeping during his excessive number of baths?
Jimi attacked the wall, wrenching away handfuls of it, until he uncovered a face. One he knew—the wavy hair, the long thin bones, the twisty mouth. Fairy blue wings. As good looking as César had claimed, wearing a long scarf, not as a blindfold, but as a headband. Had she been here the whole time, hiding in the wall?
“They’ll be coming soon,” Jimi told her. “To purify me. They have to do it a lot because I’m a terrible person.”
But they were just words. He didn’t feel terrible. Didn’t feel anything. He knew he should since this was his real mother. Finally.
“Let them come. They won’t see me, and if they do, it doesn’t matter. Now that I’ve seen you at last. My son.”
“You say that so easily. Son.” He thought about putting the clay back, imprisoning her like that guy in that Poe story who’d trapped a man behind a wall who may or may not have deserved it.
“I never wanted you here.” Fiamma took his hand, eyes wet with unshed tears. “Living a half-life. I still don’t. Come with me.” Her hand felt sticky and weird. Or maybe it was the clay. He moved out of reach.
“Dad has a new kid on the way, my other mother doesn’t want a freak for a son, I probably got my girlfriend killed—the new one. I did kill the old one. Human flesh tastes like pork. I know from experience. I’m better off here.”
“It’s the glow paste. It’s left you weak and disheartened.”
“You left me weak and disheartened! Why did you leave me?”
“I had not undergone the parenthood rite when I had you. That’s why you need to be purified now. The All Seeing was spoiled for choice in those days. So many men in easy reach. Here it’s more difficult to find anyone and travel between worlds can spoil the vessels. Eject them before they can take root. B
esides, what would you have become here? Other than food.”
“I don’t mind being food. I like to be useful. To think that my life has meaning. Why did the All Seeing turn you away? The speaker said he didn’t know why.”
“No one knows. No one had been rejected so utterly in a thousand years. Until me.”
“Rejection is a bitch. Why don’t you go to another world? This one isn’t the only one. Not even the best one.” He gave the bee in his hands a pair of wings, and it flew to his mother, as if to say hi, to make up for Jimi’s bad manners. Then it flew off to find a place in one of the long rows.
“I’m not as adventurous as you. Nor as brave.”
“Then why are you trying to rescue me?”
“I could be brave, with you at my side. We could escape together. Find a place to start over.”
She was giving him The Look, and he didn’t know how to feel about it. He settled on annoyed since it was working.
He said, “I’ll help you escape, but then I have to come back.”
“You’ll feel differently when the glow paste passes out of you, when the purification fails.”
“I won’t. I’m famous for my decisiveness.”
He wiggled through the opening he’d created in the wall and stood before his mother awkwardly. Hugs were out of the question and not because she was shirtless. Nudity had grown normal to Jimi since he’d been here; shirts only got in the way of their wings.
Fiamma settled the issue by walking off. Jimi had been the one to pull away, after all. She had to be tired of rejection.
“This old vent leads to an opening up ahead, but we have to hurry.”
Jimi followed her through a ragged tunnel carved out eons ago by magma and mayhem.
“Did you open a door already? I know how to go back to Portero, but I know you aren’t welcome there anymore.”
“I have a place in mind.”
“Is it close? It’s hard to breathe out here.”
“We won’t be traveling long enough for it to matter.”
A long, maddening silence. Face to face with his real mother and nothing was happening. Back home, all he needed to make friends was five minutes and vocal cords, but Fiamma was as distant and strangerly as ever. He had forgotten the right things to say. She wasn’t even paying attention to him, desperate as she was to make her escape. Not that he could blame her.