‘—or you could give it one more day and document a phenomenon that’ll shake the world. First the world economy falls to shreds, then the weather turns awol and now the fabric of space rips apart. Someone’s behind it all, Lucian. Mind, no one’s stopping you,’ Kate crossed her arms, shaking her pale head in comprehensive detachment. ‘I got enough going around without listening to you chunter. If it’s halopads you want, door’s open.’
Lucian brought his pacing to a stop, his blue eyes surveying an opinionated Kate. Gone was the autistic girl locked inside her own world. Gone was the imprisoned mute who wouldn’t eat. These days Kate belonged to neither Ala Spuria nor the Restrict, but to a Manor the size of a city – a Manor she would come to inherit, if Vivian had truly walked in harm’s way.
‘What happens if you – if we don’t find Vivian?’
The thought alone seemed to visibly horripilate Kate. She lowered her walls.
‘But I’ve got to! Don’t you see the mess she’s left me in?’ she pointed at a blank stretch of wall, and Lucian implicitly understood she meant the Manor. ‘I need to find her. I can’t be in charge of this… this big old house, all on my own. Not with hundreds of Neds who dream of burning it to the ground.’
When Lucian returned a sceptical look, Kate pushed on.
‘Most of them are decent, but some are no better-behaved than a burning anthill. Lived in the Restrict, didn’t I? Believe me, I know their mind.’
‘But if Vivian’s dead, it lands on your shoulders to run the Manor,’ said Lucian, a greedy glint in his blue eye. ‘You need to tell the others about it.’
‘Vivian can’t have died, alright?’ breathed Kate stubbornly. ‘She’s stronger than people give her credit for. You don’t know her like I do. She’s… she’s bound to turn up at some point.’
‘What’s this?’ Lucian asked, picking up a polyhedral shape with numbers on.
‘Viv’s twenty-four-faced die. A little plastic Kiscube,’ said Kate, turning the pages of Vivian’s journal in a rush. ‘She claimed to be able to predict which number will land on top.’
‘And could she?’
‘I’m... I’m not sure exactly. I hope she’s alright, though.’
A deep silence fell between them, for a while perturbed only by the muffled buzzing of an atomic clock and the sound of pages turning.
‘Kate…’ began Lucian tentatively, ‘do you still remember the day we met?’
Patricia Kate’s sea-green eyes flashed a shade of red. ‘You know I don’t like talking about my time at Ala— What of it?’
‘Oh, I was just wondering whether you remember the first word I ever taught you,’ he said, slowly walking towards her. ‘You could barely utter sounds, let alone speak.’
‘Thanks for the embarrassing reminder.’
But Lucian continued undeterred. ‘When nobody could reach to you, I did. I taught you your first word, do you recall?’ he took a few more steps ‘that word was friend… ‘
‘How is this relevant now?’
He gently sat on the bedside, next to her. ‘Because we could be friends. At least, I would very much like so. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Are you saying we’re not friends?’
Lucian Blossom split his geekish countenance into a wide grin. ‘We are more.’
Was Lucian flirting? Kate looked into his baby-blue eyes, watching the electrical candle flicker across his rectangular glasses. She could not deny her mind had never visited such thought. It had roamed the still waters of friendship and often even found small islands beyond.
Being loved, feeling protected, she had not much enjoyed such luxuries of spirit. The one person she felt to have loved her truly was Patricia Lara, yet all had been taken away after too little time. Kate’s promise to save Lara from the Restrict had resulted in Lara leaving the Ghetto in a box. But this here was a different promise; the promise of young love. Or was it not?
‘You’re a remarkable young lady, Kate.’
It was. Before she knew it, Lucian’s face was closer to her than it had ever been. With eyes now closed, his lips stood unmistakably pursed into the shape of a kiss—no logic, no explanation.
What drove him to such action, Kate could not guess. Lucian had never before this moment given her hints beyond friendliness. Such odds had merely birthed in the depth of her imagination. And now oddly enough, it was about to materialize: her first real kiss. Unsure what a kiss would bring, Kate allowed herself the journey. She closed her eyes and blindly leaned forward in search for his lips. Except—
Except she never found them.
A cold light burned through her closed eyelids and suddenly she was falling onwards into darkness. An alarmed scream picked at her ears. Kate opened her eyes only to find Lucian Blossom falling beside her, his hands fluttering backwards next to his chest, his feet bent crabwise. A bright orange light flashed by and a smell of sulphur burnt her nostrils. Kate dared not to, but still forced herself to look down into the obscure abyss below. Small orange glows upset an otherwise perfect black, as Lucian and her rapidly coursed through outcrops of rock and of steel. The ground came on fast.
It hurt as she hit the ground, and yet the pain was not as terrible as she had expected. The overall sensation was that they had somehow slowed down right before landing. Beside her, Lucian Blossom was already on his feet, dusting off his expensive Sporex shirt and checking himself for injuries. Once he ensured he was whole, he held out his hand, which Kate took at once.
‘This… this is wrong,’ Lucian slurred.
Kate suddenly looked hopeful. ‘Lucian, if we survived this, you don’t suppose Vivian—’
‘Shhh! I thought I saw— Look, there it went again! Just there, by that outcrop!’
The words had barely left his lips when a hairless creature of ghastly pale complexion emerged from the darkness. It was butt-naked except for a tiny loincloth, partially cloaked from view by a large, round belly. The creature had oversized, human-like hands but its lower body could’ve been a goat’s. A contorted pair of legs finished in a pair of dull, cracked hooves. Where a set of eyebrows should have been grew small, curling horns, which also adorned a large square jaw.
It was followed by a second creature of even more heinous deformity, which carried a large metal club, with spikes on the side. As a third, fourth and fifth beast emerged, Kate witnessed Lucian break into a terrified plea.
‘D-d-don’t hurt me!’
Lucian Blossom’s plea seemed to have amassed for some degree of effect, for one of the beasts lunged at Kate instead. Before she had a chance to prevent it, a knobby four-fingered hand hoisted her up by the hem of her shirt.
‘Oi!’ cried Lucian in a gust of newfound courage. ‘P-put her— put her down, you hear?’
The misshapen creature ignored his cry and gave Kate a tiny shake. A rancid roar drove dark spittle over her face while the tip of her feet barely tickled the floor. Kate gasped for breath, just as the creature’s sausage fingers got entwined in her necklace.
Smack .
Shouting about releasing Kate, Lucian picked up the largest rock he could find and threw it at the beast. It bounced off its back as though it was no more than a marshmallow, and dropped to the ground. So did Kate.
The creature had finally released her, its orange-sized eyes widened in both amazement and shock. Something seemed to have startled the beasts, for their toothy grimaces turned from aggressive to anxious. Among incomprehensible growls and grumbles, all five creatures had removed their unsightliness from the cavern. Lucian collapsed to the floor, his forehead a waterfall.
‘Whe-where— where did they—?’
‘Hopefully well away from us,’ said Kate. ‘Whatever scattered them could be coming our way.’
‘H-How can you just—?’ but the re
st of Lucian’s sentence became an indistinguishable burble. ‘M-monsters! Beasts! This isn’t— can’t be real.’
‘It is. Vivian had visions about this place. This must be where she went.’
Kate tucked in her necklace and pushed herself into a standing position. Her eyes were locked in sheer concern. ‘I don’t much like the look of those stains,’ she pointed at the dirt-floor. ‘I hope Viv’s okay.’
A significant trickle of dry blood disrupted the grey dust in visible patterns of red and of brown.
‘Someone or something crawled out of here with rather extensive injuries.’
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Lucian, getting up. ‘What do you suppose is that orange ore they’re mining?’
‘I don’t bloody care, but the blood trail follows that passage,’ said Kate, her eyes closely following the dirt. ‘Hand me that pickaxe. We don’t know what’s in the next shaft.’
Lucian dislodged an abandoned tool from a sandstone quarry. It glistened in an eerie lilac light. ‘Pray we don’t find Viv’s maimed figure in there. Those things seemed nasty.’
‘Cheerful lad, are you?’
‘When my grandad died, I couldn’t bear looking at his corpse. It’s…it’s the dead,’ Lucian confessed. ‘They frighten me more than any monster.’
‘Then let’s just hope we find neither. Come!’ said Kate, and they stepped even deeper into the mines.
Part II
Our dream of happiness is waiting for another universe to collide with our own, and change what we ourselves cannot.
A World Within
‘Another universe, you say?’
‘Different plane of existence. Kaap knows as much.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Same way Kaap understand English. The mind Kaap been trapped in knew it all.’
‘What about food?’
Kaap sniffed the air. ‘Still none,’ he said.
The soil was barren and the darkness seemed interminable. Desperation pushed Vivian into eating a rotten piece of fruit she found near a crooked tree. It tasted bitter and only deepened her thirst.
Moments later, dehydration got the better of her. Before she knew it, she found herself drinking a thick, nauseating liquid that had oozed out of a fallen log. What she had initially mistook for honey turned out to be rotten plant waste. It had cost her the full contents of her stomach.
‘Kaap told Vivian it didn’t looked eatable.’
‘ Didn’t look edible ,’ Vivian corrected him, wiping the sick from her mouth. ‘But keep at it, please. You’re really improving, Kaap. Never met anyone to learn so fast.’
Kaap, who once again looked like an overly-hairy human toddler, had turned a shade of pink.
‘Middling – Kaap means human – human language much easier than Æurlek,’ he said proudly. ‘But Æurlek round these parts come with heavy accent. Alarian language sound like mating call of Pelsinn Mount— is Vivian alright?’
‘Fine.’
Tripped by an uprooted tree, Vivian struggled to pick herself up from the ground, only to falter time and again. Her legs were simply working against her.
‘No point,’ said Vivian, giving up. ‘The leg’s gone useless. Let’s… let’s rest a bit, shall we?’
The air was cool, yet the ground underneath her burnt fiercely. Vivian took advantage of the moment’s rest to check on her bad leg. What alarmed her most was not the complete absence of pain, but the lingering smell on her flesh. She took a sniff onto to realize her bad leg had caught the scent of rot.
‘It’s festered.’
‘Vivian be fine,’ said Kaap dismissively. ‘Kaalà restores all hurts. Kaalà protects Vivian too.’
‘Kaalà?’ Vivian frowned, massaging her leg.
‘Yes, Kaalà. Kaalà be inside Kaap, inside everything. Kaalà alter reality and protect world,’ said Kaap, picking a twig from between his seven hairy toes. ‘Kaap be no higher being, no Sha’an’laa, but Kaap understand Kaalà better than Alarians. Alarians always abuse Kaalà. Abuse soul of world.’
‘You said Kaalà alters reality. How?’
‘Kaalà strong if imagination strong,’ he rang on, his bright-gold eyes now perusing Vivian’s sick leg.
The dark ulceration had spread all the way down to her ankle. Though the bleeder had finally pulled to a stop, the flesh had turned a sickish, dark grey. Part of the tissue seemed to have necrotized, and the presence of pus was hardly a good sign.
Vivian felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. The flesh around her leg was surely dying. She gathered her hands around it.
‘Mighty fine mess, eh? You think there’s—there’s still a chance to save it?’
‘A chance?’ peeped Kaap, his tiny palm feeling around Vivian’s necrosis. ‘Vivian should not be here but here she is. There is always a chance .’
Vivian sighed. ‘If we could at least find some water…’ she sadly pointed at the nearby river. Its quick waters seemed clear, but Kaap had warned her against drinking from it.
‘Slender of Ing. Waters been poisonous for an age.’
‘But you said it’s sweet water—’
‘—in which armada long drowned.’ Kaap stifled her last thought. ‘Soldier remains have spoilt good water.’
Except for the river, there had been no hint of water in miles. The trees here looked misshapen and the soil was a mixture of volcanic ash and obsidian sand. At the cost of a leg, they had eventually found a way out of the woodlands.
Just like Kaap presaged, leaving the dead forest had not been easy, nor would be the remaining two thirds of the journey, from what she had learned. According to Kaap, they were still far from reaching Solidago, the industrial heart of the Southlands.
‘Tell me about this land we’re crossing.’
‘Kaap knows it not. Kaap never been here.’
Despite having asked many questions about their whereabouts, Vivian hadn’t been able to extract much information on the matter. Kaap refused point-blank to tell Vivian anything about the place, claiming he was “a lesser creature”, thus unfit for the task of filling her in.
Her persistent questions would sometimes wriggle a cryptic answer out of him, which made Vivian think Kaap knew a lot more about the strange world than he was letting on. When she confronted him about it, Kaap declared himself afraid of disturbing “the soul of the world” and that Vivian should wait for a chance to ask an Alarian.
‘ Ærria is what Kaap thinks they call the world,’ said Kaap exasperatedly, when he could no longer stomach Vivian’s ongoing questioning. ‘Now please not ask Kaap questions. In Kranija skies have ears and flowers, mouths.’
Kaap had reluctantly told Vivian the present realm was named Kranija in the old Alarian tongue of their world, and that it meant skulls . Vivian individually concluded the reason behind skulls must surely relate to the standard surviving odds of the place: one was likely to deposit theirs upon walking the realm.
What they now called Kranija was but a barren wasteland, where numerous volcanic eruptions had eradicated most of the flora, and removed the fauna along for good measure. According to Kaap, only a few settlements had survived the hellish catastrophe. Over the ages, they had clustered into large industrial conurbations the locals had named urbs .
The urbs of Solidago, Palmatto and Emergente had become known throughout Ærria for their exports of darkglass, all-purposes salves and unconventional medicine. The largest of the three, Solidago, accommodated the greatest marketplace not just of Kranija, but all the Southlands.
Kaap indicated where there was trade must be merchants, and with merchants one should expect ships. Since he reckoned the Weavers lived one continent away, their only chance was to seek passage on a cargo ship and travel north. To Vivian, who had barely seen the outside of
the Manor, let alone a whole alien world, the idea incited an unexpected fervour, which Kaap had hurried to dismiss as “explorer’s fever”.
‘We only need ship so Weavers help Vivian home,’ Kaap nowadays repeated every time he felt Vivian’s excitement mount. ‘We not here to explore Ærria. We here to send Vivian home.’
But Vivian’s thoughts were well away from her own world, with its failing economies, flooded shorelines and incurable illnesses.
Ærria, they called it: the shadow world that had been tormenting her on and off since her arrival at the Manor. The unusual odours creeping through the cracks of the cosmos; the strange cooing sounds softly roaring from afar; the visions and the visitings – they had their cradle in Ærria.
Another universe had somehow reached out from beyond an invisible veil, taking Vivian in its midst. Unbelievable as it might have seemed at first, she was really here, in flesh. A whole and unexplored reality; a world as real as her own.
With newfound energy, Vivian was back on her feet.
‘We continue. Point the way again, Kaap.’
Vivian might have been walking for days; weeks perhaps — it was hard to tell in absence of a sun. But for the burning obsidian sands and the lukewarm air, they would have frozen by now. Vivian glanced at the pitch-black sky, her mind open to wonder. There was no moon to behold, which made everything seem more alien.
Below the horizon dangled the faintest shoot of lilac which tainted the otherwise black skyline. Was it a distant star, waiting to break through the horizon and rise and warm the world? Maybe this world had a sun; maybe the Alarian sun did not orbit the planet and was merely nestled there, over the horizon; there, where a small smudge of lilac adorned the firmament.
‘Is it always dark here?’
‘Kaap never known otherwise.’
The world felt like nothing else Vivian had experienced before. She was gripped by a feeling she was not walking towards , but within . Reality itself felt tangible and fluid, like a thick soup of invisible morsels keeping the cosmos in place.
Vivian Amberville - The Weaver of Odds Page 12