Land Beyond Summer

by Brad Linaweaver

  Fay agreed that there was nothing wrong with variety and that she, in fact, had a marked preference for it. Jennifer pressed on: “If you’ve seen one Malak, you’ve seen them all! They insist that One Season will have to conquer the other Three for all times and places. Mrs. Norse was surprised that Malak didn’t seem to care which Season would prevail over the rest. I suppose it was random chance that he chose Autumn for his first attempt. Mrs. Norse did such a good job of defending that country from him that she made it her permanent home. And incidentally, Malak was destroyed for a while. He tried to divide himself into many pieces just the way the Original had.”

  “What happened?” Fay blurted out.

  “He broke himself! But a force of will was left behind his shattered body, a fiend that wouldn’t rest until One won! Oh my, that rhymes.” The cat sniffed the air, whiskers twitching the way they always did when there was too much cuteness in the air.

  “Why is Mrs. Norse called Mrs. Norse?” asked the cat.

  “Because it’s her name, silly!” was Jennifer’s perfectly reasonable reply. “Ever since the great battle, ‘Malak’ has been an unhonorary office. Or should that be dishonorary?”

  “Dishonorary,” opined Fay because she thought it sounded better.

  “Non-honorary,” Kitnip corrected everyone in sight. “There’s something I’d like to know. Wolf and I were grabbed by humanoid things Malak had sent to replace Mr. and Mrs. Gurney…”

  “Slaks,” said Jennifer in a cold voice. “We call them Slaks.”

  “Yessss,” purred the cat, “a good name for them. I thought I was about to use up all my remaining lives, if I may draw upon a venerable human superstition. But Mrs. Norse rescued us, gave Wolf and me a briefing at her house, and then before we had our bearings, wrinkled her nose or whatever she does, and I was with Fay and I assume Wolf is with Clive. A real shame, too, because I was just becoming acquainted with a really handsome Tabby….”

  “Kitnip!” Fay was genuinely put out.

  “Sorry,” said the cat, “but I want to know what we’re up against. Is it possible to oppose Malak? If not, is there anywhere where we can hide from him?”

  Jennifer suggested they go for a walk, as much to help digest their food as absorb the feast of information following those innocent sounding words, Once upon a time. Jennifer took Fay by the hand and led her young friend to the opposite side of the alcove, while Kitnip’s dark shape darted in and about their smooth, white legs.

  “Now, as to Kitnip’s question,” Jennifer pontificated, but delightfully, “the problem was that the forces released by Malak couldn’t be reversed. They had become part of reality, the same as the Seasons. They were like a kind of bad weather.” Fay wanted to ask what they used for weather around here but the breath Jenifer took was insufficent to get a word in edgewise.

  At least Jennifer maintained a chatty tone: “When the first Malak tried to split himself into little Malaks, doing something only the Original can really do, he still accomplished a bad thing. Bits and pieces of himself spread throughout the Universes and infected people. These little bits would drift in the air of a particular world until they were inhaled by all sorts of people and animals; but only a certain kind of person was in danger of becoming infected.”

  “I see where this is going,” said Kitnip.

  “Boy, did they come to the right place when they found Grandfather.”

  “You wouldn’t be here,” Jennifer told them, “unless your world provided the new monster. There should also be signs and portents in your own sphere.”

  “I understand,” said Fay. “Global warming!”

  “Coming right after the new ice age!” sniffed the cat, unimpressed.

  “Huh?” asked Jennifer and Fay as one.

  While Fay was trying to figure out how Kitnip knew so much, Jennifer said, “You’re out of my depth, but soon you’ll meet someone who can handle almost anything.”

  They hadn’t walked that far from the site of their pleasant picnic, but they had been in a secluded place, closed in without much of a view. Fay had no idea how near they had been to their destination until they walked over a hill, crowned with tall trees.

  They had been only a few hundred yards from a most amazing sight. Instinctively, Fay’s hand went for the makeshift sack of pine cones at her side. She could feel Kitnip rubbing up against her as if to say everything was all right.

  The gigantic glass hive loomed on the horizon. Maybe a thousand of the semi-transparent men could be seen working inside and outside the edifice. From the stone mountain, it had been impossible to see inside; but close up it was easy.

  Once again, Fay was dumbfounded by a world without shadows. The effect was as if everyone floated above the ground instead of actually touching. If she ever got home again, she’d never take shadows for granted. Even the most solid looking objects were given a quality of insubstantiality by the absence of shadows; but in the case of the skeleton men, who didn’t appear real to begin with, the sight was truly disorienting.

  Another oddity was that with all the feverish activity, one would expect noise. There was only a slight rustling and murmuring to be heard, and if you weren’t seeing it for yourself you would assume these were forest sounds, the gurgling of a brook and perhaps the foraging of squirrels. As they drew nearer other sounds could gradually be made out — a low humming and a persistent sighing.

  The figures inside the glass building were working on some kind of machines that were made from all sorts of things: wood, metal, stone, glass … everything except the strange, grey substance Jennifer had warned Fay not to eat. Fay was fascinated by what the people were doing on the outside. They seemed as naked as the others except for large belts of some dark material that held tools. (She had gotten past the point of thinking of them as creatures. Whatever they were, they were most certainly people; but she didn’t like the name, Tabriks.)

  They were tending to animals that were swimming in circular ponds surrounding the great hive. These were turtle-like creatures with almost perfectly triangular shells. They flourished in pairs, one large and one small, attached by a rubbery tube that went from the exact center of one shell to the other. This meant that the big one tended to drag the little one around.

  Several of the skeleton folk were poking at the turtles with long poles. The idea seemed to be to remind the large turtles they had the smaller turtles connected to them. A powdery food being sprinkled across the surface of the water was easily consumed by the big ones, leaving nothing for their smaller partners if they weren’t prodded to remember.

  One of the Tabriks was going from pool to pool, peering at the denizens of the water through oversized spectacles. When the figure doing the inspecting was satisfied, he would simply nod at one or two of the turtle couples, and one of the workers would use his pole (they had grappling devices on the end) to fish some of the turtles out.

  Next, the two turtles would be carried over to a large object that seemed to be growing out of the ground. The top portion seemed to be a collection of small caves thrown together pell-mell, while the bottom part resembled the trunk of a gigantic tree. When the skeleton man positioned the two small creatures, still dripping wet, over one of the caves, hanging helplessly, he pulled out a pair of scissors from a belt that was his only attire. He snipped the cord! The two turtles separated and fell, side by side, into the waiting dark holes.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” asked Jennifer.

  “If you say so,” was Fay’s uncertain reply.

  “They’re mating!” reported Kitnip. “That can’t be anything else.” There were slippery sounds emanating from the holes, and occasionally the flash of something glistening down there in the dark.

  “It’s the Klave,” intoned Jennifer.

  “Whatever they’re doing,” said Fay, surprising herself by the depths of peevishness she detected in her own voice, “how is this going to help my family? I don’t have anyone….” (and even as the words escaped from her lips, she knew
she was doing Kitnip an injustice) … but she couldn’t stop the torrent: “I’m tired and I’m afraid.”

  “If you were really afraid,” came a kind voice, “you wouldn’t carry on like that.”

  Turning slowly, she saw one of the Tabriks, her terrible skeleton men, standing right behind her. Only this time she felt just fine about it. ***

  The forest of Autumn was cool without being clammy or wet. With no mornings or nights, it was a mystery when, if ever, dew clung to the brightly colored leaves. But however it was accomplished, the fresh smell was refreshing.

  Clive and Wolf felt strong and weren’t even a little bit tired. This was good, because the woods were wide and deep. Since drinking the water Wolf had found, Clive was reinvigorated; he was still hungry but able to ignore the empty ache at the center of his stomach. As he ran, he felt like he was floating above the ground.

  “It’s here!” cried Wolf, loping forward. He’d found a path, no small feat with all the leaves around. Clive was filled with joy. After all, paths generally lead somewhere. Their destination must be near … especially with the remarkable totem pole towering up ahead, and growing larger with every step.

  Wolf was so happy that he was running up and down a rock studded incline next to the path. He even let himself bark. There must not be any dangers here. Clive relaxed.

  They ran the rest of the way.

  As Clive took his first step out of the woods, birds began to sing. They seemed to be mostly above and behind him, but he didn’t waste any time trying to see them. His attention was riveted by the house he’d spied through the telescope on the mountain of stone; only it was far more dramatic experienced close at hand.

  The house was more than secluded. Viewed from any angle, it was well hidden unless you came up right on top of it. And yet as he moved closer, Clive noticed how peculiar it was that the place had a neatly kept lawn. Even if it was raked every day, a cascade of leaves and twigs would surely cover it within a few hours.

  The scene was as perfect as something out of a display window at a department store, awash in the glow of good credit. The house was of wood and brick, with just a dab of paint here and there to show off its best features. There were two stories with the largest lightning rod this side of a Frankenstein movie jutting from the roof and pointed at the totem pole. The perfectly maintained lawn enclosed the house like a green doughnut.

  The path Wolf had been following came to an abrupt end at the edge of the grass. Wolf turned to Clive as if the human member of the team should do something. All Clive knew was that he didn’t like upstairs windows. These seemed to be gazing upon him with sad, dusty eyes.

  “Weird,” was how he appraised the tall, wooden mailbox rising incongruously out of the leaf blanketed ground directly in front of the untouched lawn. On the front of the box was a great cat’s head with emerald eyes shining.

  “Wonder how she gets mail out here,” said Wolf. The dog sniffed at the edge of the green sea. This was the most remarkable proof yet to Clive that they were in a topsy-turvy world: a dog hesitating to go on the grass! Clive decided to take the initiative. There was no other way to reach the door. Besides, Wolf told him to go first.

  Even through his shoes, it was as if he could feel the softness of each individual blade. It was like walking on foam rubber. He marched forward to the front door.

  There was no doorbell, no heavy knocker, no way of making noise but to bring his fist down on the old wood. He did just that, knocking once, twice, three times. Meanwhile, Wolf had crept up behind him. Their roles had changed subtly. The dog was not sure of himself here.

  From inside they heard a rustling, and then the mewing of a cat. The door opened on well-oiled hinges without the slightest squeak. With exacting little ballet steps, a cat emerged. Clive could feel how uncomfortable Wolf was as the feline walked around them, scrutinizing every detail, before disappearing inside.

  All this time, the door was only half open. Now it opened all the way. A voice from deep inside called out: “Welcome.”

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  The Land Beyond Summer is posted for entertainment purposes only and no part of it may be crossposted to any other datafile base, conference, news group, email list, or website without written permission of Pulpless.Comtm.

  Copyright © 1996 by Brad Linaweaver. All rights reserved.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MRS. NORSE

  They entered the dark interior of the old house. Of course, if this were the only house in the whole world, there wasn’t anything that could be used for comparison. But it sure felt old, smelling of mothballs and clean rosewood, of delicate incense and furniture polish.

  In the hallway, there was a noisy grandfather clock keeping time with heavy monotony. Clive felt that he should tiptoe past the antique as if he didn’t want to disturb the repetitive ticks and tocks with his own sounds. It was that kind of place.

  He’d never been in a house like this before. The closest he’d come was at a museum, in the Early American section. More than a carefully preserved house, this was like stepping inside a glass case where a history lesson in old wood and older ceramics were laid out under golden lights, with big DO NOT TOUCH signs everywhere. Only there were no signs.

  Wolf let Clive take the lead. It was easy to sense how uncomfortable the dog was. The brown and white cat that had met them at the door expressed a disdain far beyond anything Kitnip had ever shown.

  Clive was nervous, too. At least he was until he stepped into the living room. Mrs. Norse was waiting for them. One look at her put Clive at his ease.

  She was standing in the center of the room, surrounded by cats. She had a full head of silver-white hair, but it didn’t make her appear old. Her smooth, strong face suggested hearty middle age; the few wrinkles around her eyes and neck seemed less the result of aging as the final touch to a work of art. The hair was combed upwards so that different strands found their own eccentric peaks. A gigantic pair of owl glasses, supported by a sizeable nose, dominated her face. The dress she wore was an old fashioned mother hubbard affair, the primary color of which was lavender.

  “Hello,” she said in a musical voice that made the single word into both a fond greeting and question.

  “Mrs. Norse, I presume,” said Clive, regaining enough confidence to try and be funny. For the first time since stepping foot in this world, he felt at ease. Wolf was happy to see her, too; so much so that he promptly forgot how uncomfortable he’d been a moment before. His tail was wagging so hard you’d never know he was surrounded by cats. After all, it is one thing to grow up with one cat as a friend; it is quite another to be deposited in the enemy camp, so to speak. “Woof,” was all he could think to say under the circumstances.

  “You are both more than welcome,” said Mrs. Norse. “I bear the responsibility of bringing you here. Please sit down, Clive.”

  The nearest place to sit was a comfortable looking chair that had a partly finished cross-stitch lying on the seat cover. As he reached down to move the item lest he damage it, he noticed the subject of the picture taking shape with each little piece of colored thread. It was a family: a mother, a father, a daughter, a son … and as he looked more closely at the nearly finished creation, he couldn’t help but recognize the all too familiar faces.

  “I must be getting careless,” said Mrs. Norse, stepping forward to relieve him of the sewing. “It wouldn’t do to have you sitting on my modest handiwork.”

  She felt his reluctance in letting it go. “Oh, don’t worry,” she comforted him. “It is a picture of your family, but that’s all. Not a smidgen of magic to it!” He did feel relieved when she said that, but wasn’t sure why.

  As she moved off in the direction of the kitchen, more cats came into the room. A lot more cats. Clive glanced over at Wolf to make sure that he was all right. Apparently, the presence of Mrs. Norse was sufficient to keep everyone well behaved.

  “You mustn’t think that everyth
ing here is more than it appears,” she said as she entered the kitchen, her voice rising so that she could still be heard. “Nature has a purpose here, the same as manmade artifacts in your world, but that doesn’t make everything you see a symbol.”

  He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about but appreciated the clattering sound of pots and pans. She must be making something to eat. “Sometimes a cross-stitch is just a cross-stitch,” she finished, as she reappeared carrying a wooden tray laden with tea and cookies.

  “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever hoid,” said one of the cats in a perfect imitation of Groucho Marx.

  “Please put a sock in it, Sigmund,” replied another of the cats.

  Clive marveled at the fact that he would have been more surprised if the cats didn’t speak. While he was at it, he was also amazed that despite a roomful of cats, there wasn’t the least odor of catbox, or that aroma that comes from a lot of them being together. There were things about this world he could definitely come to enjoy, if he gave himself a chance. While he pondered such matters, a white kitten began to laboriously climb up his pants leg.

  “What flavor tea would you like, young man?” asked Mrs. Norse, leaning down and offering him the tray.

  “Do you have a Coke, or something like that?” he asked, embarrassed the moment the words were out of his mouth.

  “He’ll catch on, give him time,” said Wolf in a most annoying tone of voice. Clive kept forgetting his dog, the dog, had already had dealings with the lady of the house.

  “There’s nothing wrong with your request, but we only have teas here. I’ll tell you what. How about we make one of my special teas taste any way you like?”

  “Will it be cold?” he asked, wincing as the kitten navigated past his kneecap.

  “He’s pickier than you are,” complained a fat Persian to a crazed looking Siamese.

  “As cold as a shard of ice, as frosty as the soul of a giant,” Mrs. Norse replied. This bit of unexpected poetry left Clive with his mouth open, a condition quickly remedied by a tall frosty glass pushed in his direction. He hadn’t seen anything on the tray but teacups and cookies a moment ago; but now this pleasure was pressed on him at the same moment the kitten settled itself comfortably in his lap.