by Coleman Luck
An ugly idea.
He decided the proof of his current status must come from outside his body. But where?
The sky? Earlier there had been a sun…and now there were stars. At the funeral all the minister had talked about was water. The “ocean” of eternity. A sun and stars must mean that you were on a real world. And that would mean that you were alive. Suddenly Alex wanted to see the stars, in fact, was desperate to see them. Struggling to roll over, he looked up…and almost stopped breathing.
Instead of the stars, he saw the Mountain.
In all the time he had been drifting, he had been so miserable that he had never imagined actually going somewhere. But he had been going somewhere. As he sat up, what he saw made him forget everything else. Looming above him in the starlight was the silhouette of a mountain so gigantic that it took up half the sky, and behind it rose the knife-edge of an eerie rust-red moon.
Something told him that what he was seeing now would make every other mountain in the universe look like an insignificant pile of rocks. Alone it stood in its forbidding vastness, like a Mighty King towering over the world. And in the moonlight, around the summit, hung a faint red mist like a crown of blood.
As Alex stared transfixed, inside him grew feelings that he had never known before. Smallness. Insignificance. Overwhelming awe. And from those feelings came a strange desire; no, a hunger. He had never worshiped anything in his life. But without knowing it, at that moment, worship was what he wanted to do. He hungered to fall down before the mountain above, to prostrate himself in the shadow of its vastness and never rise again. Instead, all he could do was tremble, knowing that such a mountain had never existed on the world in which he was born. Sinking back, he let the vision sweep over him. Even his thirst seemed unimportant now. All that mattered was drifting…and seeing…and feeling.
But then, in a single instant, everything was gone—the Mountain, the moon, even the stars, and he was engulfed in total darkness.
7
BELLWIND’S HOUSE
Red moonlight turned the mist crimson as the raft carrying Amanda and Tori drifted up the river of shadows. Around them was a forest of such ghostly splendor that it seemed to live on the edge of dreaming. The current took them past hazy banks dappled with soft ferns, beneath the smoky hair of dangling willows, and through clusters of blossoms that drifted like little clouds. In the ancient trees they could see the gnarled and gentle faces of old men and women nodding, whispering…then fading as they passed. And always the strange, lovely voice sang on. As the island drew them deeper, more voices joined it, some deep and rumbling, others clear and high. Through it all, Bellwind knelt at the front of the raft with her arms outstretched and her face shining. “The trees. My very trees. Do you hear them? I have missed their voices for so long.” As the girls looked up at her, for the first time they saw how beautiful old age could be, how strong and filled with joy.
Night settled more deeply and the trees grew luminous. As they drifted beneath a rock draped with vines, a rain of mist fell on Amanda, making her skin glow. She looked at Tori who was still holding the baby. A circle of shimmering moss had settled in her hair like a starry crown. For a moment she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a lovely creature of the forest who Amanda feared might dissolve away.
Bellwind looked down at them and knew what was happening. The island had taken them in its arms. The peace that entered Amanda and Tori that night would remain with them always. During all the terrifying things that were to come, they would never forget the singing trees and the misty river that had whispered love into their hearts.
The girls were almost asleep when the raft floated around a bend and entered a lagoon bathed with moonlight. On the bank stood a strange house, and from the roof rose a tower so high that its top was lost in the clouds. Bellwind gazed at it. “Home…my home. Finally, finally, I am back home.” As they drifted nearer, the girls saw that the house was covered with gables—little boxy projections with windows and miniature roofs that stuck out in the oddest ways. Not a single one was like another. There were tiny balconies and lattices and frosted glass windows with candles burning inside. It reminded Amanda of an old Victorian cottage.
The raft came to rest against a little pier, and Bellwind wiped her eyes. “Forever and goodness, what a journey. But getting—arriving—home is always the best part. Which goes to show that I wouldn’t make a good travel agent, because I’d only sell one-way tickets back to where you came from.”
Stepping onto the pier, she walked up a little path toward the cottage. Then she stopped and looked back. The girls weren’t following. “Well, come-come along. Don’t be shy. Do you want to spend all night out here when there are good beds inside? Now, that would be immeasurably strange for girls from the outlying limits of the universe, the very suburbs of Chicago. And bring the baby with you. I’d ask our friend the dog to join us, but I’m sure he has other obligations.” As though in answer, the dog jumped from the raft and splashed off into the woods.
Amanda and Tori stared at each other…and at the pier. The pier was the problem. It seemed entirely too misty to hold anything up. It was true that Bellwind had stepped on it, but she could do a lot of things that no one else could. Solemnly Tori turned to her sister. “You first, you’re fatter. If it doesn’t break with your weight, it’ll be okay for me and the baby.”
“Oh, really?”
“I didn’t say fat. I said fat-ter.”
Bellwind cleared her throat. Giving Tori a dirty look, Amanda began crawling up onto the foggy wood. First an arm. Then a leg. Finally her whole body. To her relief, it was solid. “It’s okay. Come on.”
Holding the baby against her shoulder, Tori climbed out, and then the girls followed Bellwind toward the house. Stepping onto the porch, the old woman smiled, walked forward, and promptly vanished. There wasn’t any door; where one should have been there was a solid wall of blue bricks. Amanda ran her fingers over them. Definitely real and hard. “So, what are we supposed to do now?”
“Come in. That is precisely, exactly what you’re supposed to do.” It was Bellwind’s voice, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Uhhh…we can’t seem to find a door.” Amanda had hardly spoken the words when the old woman’s head appeared above them, sticking straight through the wall like a mounted hunting trophy. “You don’t need doors to get into my house. Doors-barriers-barricades are to keep things out. And there’s nothing to keep out here. Not on this island. It belongs to me. Just walk through any place wherever you choose. Naturally, the porch is recommended. For instance, and thinking about the possibility, if you walked in under that gable over there, you’d knock over my bookshelf. Immeasurably not to be recommended.” Bellwind’s head looked so peculiar that the girls laughed.
Amanda tapped on the wall. “You mean…just pretend like the bricks aren’t here?”
“Who said anything about pretending? Was such a word ever, mostly never, mentioned? Pretending, imagining, and such and such, take thinking. And some things you just have to do. That, precisely, and consequently, is the trouble these days and why walking through bricks is a lost and dying art. But such will not be the case with you. Come into my house this very instant.” With that, her head vanished and the girls were left staring at the place where it had hung.
Tori gulped. “You first.”
“No way. You’re skinnier. You could slide between the bricks like a little worm.”
They heard Bellwind clear her throat again. With a grimace Tori reached toward the wall. When she touched it, both were amazed to see her arm vanish to the elbow. Then she felt someone take hold of her hand and before she knew it, both she and the baby had been pulled inside. Amanda watched her disappear and then heard her yell, “Hey, you’ve gotta see this.”
Closing her eyes, Amanda walked forward. When she opened them again, she found herself in a most unusual room. The inside of Bellwind’s house was much larger than it appeared outside. The room the girls had entered was l
ong and narrow and at the center stood a spiral staircase with a huge banister that wound upward into the shadows. But what was so wonderful was the furniture. It looked as though it had come from garage sales and swap meets all over the universe. Not that it was dirty or trashy. Everything was very clean and in perfect order. But it was a stacked and jumbled kind of order. And no matter where they looked, they saw odd things.
Against one wall stood a huge coatrack made of plumbing pipes bent and twisted like the limbs of a tree. Hanging from them were rusting pieces of junk automobiles that had been reshaped into medieval armor. There was a breastplate with old radio knobs and a helmet with a turn signal on the visor. Beside the coatrack sat a moth-eaten love seat with blinking Christmas tree lights stitched into the upholstery. Relaxing on it were a Victorian dress flowing with ripples and ruffles, and a stiff Victorian suit with a watch fob hanging from the pocket. They were frozen in place as though the bodies that had worn them had simply disappeared. Near the love seat hung a gigantic wind chime made from ten thousand pieces of gaudy costume jewelry. Next to that huddled a pile of crates that looked like a musical instrument. It had a keyboard with little hammers that tapped on three hundred soft-drink bottles filled with different amounts of orange soda.
But the strangest decorations were above the fireplace. There, side by side, hung seven antique picture frames. All were huge and deeply carved with overlays of gold. And all were empty. In each frame there was nothing but dark blue glass. Amanda would have asked about them if she hadn’t been more interested in Bellwind herself. The old woman was ensconced in an overstuffed chair upholstered in living moss. She had taken off her shawl and was wearing a long dress covered with real flowers. On a little table in front of her sat a tray laden with peanut-butter sandwiches and hot cocoa. Two smaller chairs were waiting for her guests.
“Come, sit down entirely and immediately, and gather yourselves to eat. I don’t suppose young women from Earth like hot cocoa.”
The young women from Earth assured her that they did. The food was delicious, and as they ate, Amanda and Tori began to relax and ask questions. “Where’d you get all this cool junk?” Tori licked peanut butter off her fingers.
“Oh, I’m a collector. Garages sales, swap meets, flea markets, there isn’t one in the universe that escapes my attention. But I’ve gotten choosy—picky-picky—as the years have passed. Space is limited. Not much room left for treasures. So sad.”
“Why don’t you throw some of it away? Then you’d have plenty of room.”
Aghast, Bellwind stared at Amanda. “Throw it away? Get rid of it? My sweet but most insensitive young friend, how, in a hundred worlds, could I throw away such infinitely priceless feelings?”
“Feelings?”
“Do you think I bought all this junk because I like the look of it? Feelings. Feelings. Those are what matter. Every single piece in my house is stuffed, stacked, jammed with them. Why, right here in this room, in this very place beyond all others, is the most complete set of feelings ever assembled. A thing isn’t anything until someone has glued a feeling on it. And if the glue is strong enough, they stick like bugs in amber. What kind of feeling do you like, excitement? Just stand next to my gym shoe collection.” (Not far away a hundred old gym shoes hung nailed to the wall.) “And musicy thrills? What can compare with the healthy slurp of thirsty people? Wait until you hear my soda bottles. Oh, do not be mistaken. No, indeed, young ladies. True feelings are hard to find. And there are plenty of fake ones on every world. But you can tell the frauds in a minute. They’re the ones that hang around old TV sets. Fake feelings cranked out to make you think they’re real so they can sell you more fake things. And who would waste a dime on any of those?”
The old woman took them on a tour of her living room. They found that what she had said was true. Each piece had a different feeling attached to it. Their favorite was the old love seat, the way it whispered words like “sweet dumpling cakes” and “I’ll kiss your ruby lips forever.” When Amanda asked about the frames, however, the only answer she got was vague and sad. Something about old friends who had gone away. And beneath the frames was the only place where they weren’t allowed to stand.
But Bellwind was so merry that it didn’t seem to matter.
The evening ended with buttery toast and misty marmalade that tingled on their tongues. Then the girls snuggled up in soft chairs while Bellwind played her “bottle-odeon.” That’s what she called the boxes with the keyboard and the bottles of orange soda. It made a gentle, haunting sound, not at all what they had expected. And while they listened, they couldn’t imagine ever being thirsty again.
Whether it was the music, the overstuffed chairs, or their overstuffed stomachs, soon both girls began to feel very drowsy. Amanda saw Tori nod off, and it wasn’t long before her eyelids grew extremely heavy. The harder she tried to keep them open, the heavier they grew. Bellwind was singing something silly about the plants that covered the island and a costume party they had each year. Amanda wanted to listen, but the words became more and more indistinct until everything melted into a dream.
In the dream, strong arms gently lifted her and carried her up a staircase. And for a moment she was a little girl again with her daddy carrying her off to bed just as he had done so long ago. Amanda didn’t wake up until much later. Not until everything that was about to happen had happened.
And when she awoke, the whole world had changed.
8
NIGHT WALK
When the Mountain disappeared, Alex was so shocked that he almost jumped out of the raft. The truth was that he had been so engrossed in looking upward that he hadn’t watched where the strong current was taking him. Silently the raft had drifted toward a shore of black cliffs that were hardly visible until he was upon them. In those cliffs was a rift with a jagged formation across it. The sky had vanished because he had entered the rift; over him now was a wide expanse almost like a stone archway, and when he emerged on the other side, only a few stars and a sliver of moon were visible.
Alex stared around. He was floating up a narrow gorge. Shafts of rust-red moonlight glinted on the water. On either side and to his front rose stone walls hundreds of feet high. He had come to land. But what land?
At first the walls of the canyon appeared to be natural formations, but it was hard to tell exactly what they were because they were covered with thick vines. The longer he stared, the more he thought he saw strange shapes spaced uniformly along the top, piles of rock almost like the battlements on a medieval castle. But in his overwrought imagination they could have been anything. A light wind had begun to blow, and its keening wail made him shiver.
The farther Alex drifted, the more the walls of the gorge became irregular, bending and twisting like the body of a huge snake ripped open in the moonlight. And with every bend the vines grew longer, spiraling out to brush the raft like tentacles. Constantly he jerked his head this way and that, straining to see every crevice and weaving form. The harder he looked, the more his imagination painted the gorge with horrors.
It wasn’t natural.
He was sure of it now.
Ages and ages ago someone had carved it out of solid rock. And he knew something else. It grew out of an awful feeling that welled up until his skin crawled. From the moment he had drifted into this place something had been watching him.
Abruptly there was a soft bump that almost made him jump out of his skin. The raft scraped to a stop against an odd embankment. Beside him in the moonlight was a ruined wall with ancient steps carved into it. For a moment all he could do was huddle in terror with his mind racing; he tried to see where the stairs went, but they vanished around a stone outcropping. They must lead to the top, but the thought of climbing into the darkness was beyond imagining. Yet what else could he do? He couldn’t keep floating forever. Pushing back out into the canal could mean landing somewhere even worse. And he had no oars. Alex might have sat shivering all night, if it hadn’t been for his thirst.
Suddenly it was unbearable.
No choice.
He had to find water.
Reaching out, he grabbed some vines and dragged himself onto the embankment. But when he tried to stand, he almost fell back into the canal. After floating for so long, his legs were like rubber. It took a few minutes before his balance returned. Then slowly he began groping up the stairs. He had to be careful because they were covered with debris. When he passed the outcropping, he stopped. They led into a vine-covered hole.
How could he do this? How could he bring himself to go in there? But he had to. His thirst was terrible. His throat felt like he’d been swallowing hot coals.
Gritting his teeth, Alex pulled back the curtain of vines. Beyond was a pitch-black passage with more stairs leading up. Creeping in, he smelled a sickening mustiness. Half gagging, he began to climb.
Alex found that the staircase twisted back and forth and was clotted with rotting vegetation. Many times he tripped and fell. Many times he jumped back shivering, brushing sticky webs from his hair and clothes. But always his thirst drove him on. At one point, after a nasty tumble, he discovered a stick. This he used as a sort of brush, swishing it in front of him. The stick helped with the webs, but it didn’t help with the small creatures that scurried past on the ground. Once, something larger brushed his leg, causing him to yell and almost fall backward. But he caught himself, sweating, trembling, and trying not to be ill.
At several places he came upon landings, like little oases. Each had a break in the wall that allowed in a glimmer of moonlight. Through them Alex was able to look out and mark his progress. Soon the dark gash of the canal was lost below. The cliffs were much higher than he had imagined; he began counting the stairs—one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred. Somewhere in the fives he lost track, and they just kept on.