Over the Sea

by Sherwood Smith

  So violence was used to get you to behave, to work harder, to listen — and to think, or at least to pretend to think, like everyone else, to behave the way they told you to. The only safe place was away from adults. And the very idea that someone like Clair could be real would be something the adults would feel they had to beat out of me for my own good.

  TWO — Over the Sea

  A soft tapping at the door — she was back!

  Soon we sat on the fence. “What’s your favorite color?” I asked.

  “Mmm ... I keep changing my mind, truth to tell. To see, I like them all. Blue right now. And you?”

  “Green. I love blue too, but the green of trees, of grass, and there couldn’t be anything prettier than green velvet. I saw some once, in a movie.”

  Her lips shaped the word movie?

  I explained. She said it sounded like magic, and I asked her to do another magic trick, to prove to myself again that that, too, was real.

  After that we talked, and played, and traded stories. I told the stories of books that I’d read, sometimes acting them out, and she told me more about the Mearsieans — and a little more about Glotulae, her brat of a son, and Kwenz. Though not much. Talking about them made her angry. And once her voice went so soft I couldn’t hear what she was saying, and I got impatient until I looked over and saw the sheen of tears on her eyelids, glistening in the light of the street lamp.

  Each time she stopped herself and said something like I should talk about the good things. And I was too scared I’d lose her if I said that the villains were interesting — and that I’d been drawing pictures of them at school, imagining ways of defeating them. I remembered my promise to myself to be calm, not wild, polite.

  Other times we talked about, oh, all kinds of things, like horses, what foods we loved or hated, and why flowers smelled good, and even about government, although I have to admit my mind wandered the one time she brought that up.

  Sometimes — if I forgot my vow — I made her laugh.

  We only talked about our families once. “Who else is in the house?” she asked, pointing.

  “Family,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

  “They are evil, then?”

  “Evil? Nah,” I said, though I was thinking of those terrible beatings with the belt. But other kids got that too. The next door neighbor girl had gotten it once just for talking to another kid who was of a religion her parents didn’t like. Their windows were next to our driveway, where I was playing hopscotch that time. I could hear the snap of the belt, which sounded even scarier when someone else was getting it than when I was, her sobs in between But I didn’t know anything was wrong.

  “Indifferent, then?” Clair asked.

  At the time I didn’t know what that word meant. I shrugged. “I feel like a cat among dogs, or maybe like a dog among cats. How about you?”

  “I am now alone, except for a cousin I rarely get to see.”

  And that was that, leaving me almost overwhelmed with envy. Alone! So that was why she got to come here, and not worry about getting into trouble, and why she could learn magic! Freedom! Never any terror when you go home that someone’s in a bad mood, and a thing you do or say wrong that one day just gets a dirty look will today get you welts that last for three weeks.

  o0o

  Oh, then came the great surprise.

  On her next appearance she said right away, “At last I’ve learned enough magic to take you with me to my world, and get you back here at the same time you left, so there won’t be trouble. Would you like that?”

  I had to whisper, of course, lest I wake someone up, but my YES! nearly blasted the stucco from the walls.

  She took my hand, muttered some crazy words . My teeth hummed, my scalp felt like it was crinkling —

  — And my vision smeared, leaving me feeling dizzy and upset at the stomach. Not so that I had to barf, but more like you feel after spinning round and round just after you ate a big meal.

  But the feeling passed, and Clair said, “Sorry about the transfer ickies. It happens when you go long distances.”

  I blinked.

  “Like between worlds,” she added.

  I realized I was standing on a balcony, and it was daylight. At first I thought the railing was made out of ice, except the air was warm. Was it plastic, then? Because it reminded me of the fake North Pole at Santa’s Village, which featured fake icicles and snow, but when I touched it, it did not feel like plastic. It felt like stone. I looked at it more closely. It was glistening, just like ice, and even faintly translucent near the surface, but under the surface the color was white.

  “What is this stuff?” I asked Clair, who looked much the same in daylight as at night: a girl of maybe twelve, square face, ordinary kid build, pale skin, light hazel eyes, and pure white hair — not blond, but white, so white it had a faint bluish cast. Her brows were thin but black, as were her eyelashes.

  I pointed at the railing. “Is it marble?” I’d read about marble, but I hadn’t seen any. You didn’t see marble in my neighborhood.

  “Not marble.” She smiled. “Other than that I don’t know. Someday I’ll find out, if I can. My cousin says it’s rock-like stuff that only forms on our world, but you don’t quarry it, like rocks. See? There are no stones joined together. It’s shaped by magic, and though our histories claim the mages made it, somehow I don’t think they did, I think they found it.”

  She turned around, her white hair swinging, white against the glistening white walls of a —

  A palace. Above rose towers, with more balconies, reaching toward a sky so deep a blue it was almost like the blue just before sunset, after a rare rain, at home. Because there sure was no smog here.

  “A palace?” I said. “It looks like a fairy tale castle!”

  “It’s not a castle,” Clair said. “No walls, see? No arrow slits for windows, nothing for defense. That’s because we’re on a cloud.”

  She pointed back over the balcony, and I stared. Right below was a terrace of the white stuff, and beyond it a garden. But beyond the edges of the garden, nothing, and beyond that a spectacular view. We were high above a vast woodland, for greenery stretched almost to the horizon to the west, and south. I leaned out and peered to the northwest, and saw that the woodland ended, and there was farmland, broken into smallish plots, and little city, with a palace in its center, looking like a toy in the bright sunlight. Hills rose like knuckles in the north.

  In the southwest several mountains, like old volcanic cones, reached skyward, their tops cloud-wreathed; more directly south, beyond the woodland below, the bluish sparkle of a lake threw back the sunlight in a million shards. The southeast appeared to be farmland, just barely discernible squares of different colors.

  I looked beyond the edge again. Realized how far down that woodland was, and I got that stomach-drop squinch you get inside when you first start swinging high, and fall back down.

  “Castles — palaces — can’t be on clouds,” I said, holding on. As if that would keep me from falling! “Clouds are vapor. I know that much.”

  “It’s cloud if you see it from below,” Clair said. “But we’re really standing on part of the ground-surface lifted into the air. Remember what I told you about the Chwahir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the entire city was lifted — again by great magic — as a defense against them.”

  “Yikes,” I managed, thinking that the crashing down of a city in the sky would be a million times worse than the earthquakes at home. “Do, um, spells run out? Like batteries?”

  “Spells do diminish over time, but you know of it,” she said. “And this one is good for another five hundred years or so. Maybe more.” Her forehead was broad and mostly smooth; when she said those words a faint pucker shadowed it. I’d figure out way later that she wasn’t all that sure about five hundred years of a city above another city, even if the Mearsieans were on the top and the Chwahir below.

  “Wow,” I said, and looked up again,
seeing archways and windows and balconies, most of them with curves, few square angles. It was beautiful. “Floob,” I added, because Wow just didn’t seen strong enough.

  Clair laughed, so quiet a sound you almost couldn’t hear it, but her mouth curved up and her eyes turned into crescents, looking at that moment far more green than they usually did.

  It was then that I connected what I was seeing with her stories. And what she’d said just after our arrival.

  Another world? Over the sea — as in one of the summer stars?

  I looked around again, wonder making my heart go kawhumpa-kawhumpa. There were no cement roads, no signals, no cars or trucks, no advertising billboards or ugly stucco buildings, no smog hazing everything.

  I breathed — and the air smelled good. Like flowers, and a little like spices, and other things I couldn’t name. And it didn’t hurt to breathe all the way in.

  “I’m. On. Another. World,” I said, my head buzzing with amazement.

  Clair was laughing again. “Yes.”

  “So those stories you told me, all of them were true?” I whirled around. “So is that the Sherwoods’ Forest?” I pointed below.

  “Yes.”

  “And those mountains way, way far away that-a-way — that must be Seram Aru. And way out there in the west, that sun-haze, is that the Senyavin Desert?”

  “Yes.” Her lips parted in a silent laugh.

  I leaned out again. “And that,” I pointed to the tiny city, “must be Glotulae’s place.” I squinted at it, realizing why it looked like a toy: the basic structure of the central castle was squat, but atop the towers and walls were silly conical roofs and other things too far away to see. The effect was very fussy, like ... like ... “It looks like a really stupid wedding cake,” I exclaimed.

  Once again Clair’s laugh. When it was loud enough to be heard her laugh sounded kind of like a kitten sneezing.

  “Heya.” That was a new voice!

  A girl appeared in the archway leading indoors. She was a little bit taller than me, with big round blue eyes and a round face and a jumble of honey-blond curls, most of which fell in corkscrews. She gave me a merry grin, and held out a metal disc on a chain — a necklace.

  The girl said something in words I didn’t understand, motioning for me to put the necklace on.

  “Take it,” Clair said. “While you’re here it’ll give you our language.”

  “What?” I stared in amazement, then as both girls watched, slowly put the necklace round my neck. My skin felt kind of prickly for a brief moment, then the medallion clunked against my collar-bone knobs.

  “I’m Sherry.” The girl said again. Her voice was high and as merry as her smile. “Welcome to Mearsies Heili!”

  My head felt odd, as if someone had waved a feather-fan through it, but I understood her words, though I knew they weren’t English.

  Welcome as in she lives here? Jealousy made my guts burn, but I squished it down. “This is your home?” I asked. My voice came out squeaky as I realized I was talking that language as well!

  “I live here,” Sherry said happily. “Want to play?”

  “Sure!”

  “Where?” Sherry asked, obviously letting the guest pick.

  I looked at the palace, longing to explore. But palaces have owners, and though Clair’s few references to the Mearsieans’ new queen didn’t make her sound like any tyrant, I did not want to risk any adults getting mad at me for yelling, or making noise, or acting crazy, and would Clair get mad and send me back, never to return?

  No palace, then. Well, what about woodland? Los Angeles had no woods, only ugly, nasty palm trees that don’t cast a bit of shade; the only real tree on my block, an old oak, was strictly forbidden territory. Anyone who climbed it got into trouble. And it was so full of caterpillars that sneaking a climb was kind of nasty.

  I remembered that Clair’d told me about the woodland almost first thing, and how she loved it. I pointed. “There.”

  Sherry looked expectantly at Clair, who motioned us to stand together. Sherry took my hand, Clair took my other, muttered and made a sign, and again that dizzy smear, but much shorter. Getting rid of the feeling was equally short.

  Leaving me staring at golden shafts of light slanting down onto grasses so green, so vivid and pure a green, I wanted to cry and laugh and jump around and hug the world, all at once.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, looking up at the interlaced branches and leaves overhead, all of them moving in the breeze, making a whispering sound. “Oh!” Down the rugged trunks, so many different shades of brown, and here and there the smooth silver of a beech. “Ohhhh.” Ahead, into branch-formed grottoes and shadowed pathways that just beckoned for exploration.

  Where to go first? I forgot all about games.

  “Want to look around?” Clair asked.

  “Will we get lost?”

  Clair shrugged. “Maybe, but it doesn’t matter, because I can transfer us up from anywhere. You just need a destination, see. A place you know.”

  “Oh, then, can we run a little? Down that path?” I pointed to the shadowiest.

  “C’mon!” Sherry cried, leading the way.

  I followed, drawing in a deep breath.

  I think I will always remember that first conscious breath. I still can’t identify every single scent, though I do try. Oak, pine, moss, wood, clean water, herbs, blossoms, even duff, wet soil, and decomposing leaves, it all filled me with such joy I felt as if I could fly — or that I might fly apart.

  So I ran after Sherry, screaming as loud as I could, and laughing until my voice rang and echoed back.

  We ran until the trees thinned, and through them I saw a huge conical mountain, its peak wreathed in clouds. Trees grew sporadically about halfway up, at least on this side. Beyond that it was all rock, with lots of ledges and crannies that Clair — seeing me staring — said were caves.

  “There’s one really special one,” she added. “Leads to a very strange sort of magic place. Strange for humans, anyway,” she added.

  “What else would go there?” I asked, surprised.

  “Beings who lived here before humans came.”

  Of course my first thought was of monsters, for ‘beings’ on TV and movies of that time all featured rubber-masked monsters whose whole purpose seemed to be capturing and killing humans, or else capturing ladies in tight clothes with blond hair and high heels and thick dark lipstick for some other weird reason that we kids never could figure out. I mean, who’d want those shrieking, kicking sillies?

  “Beings?” I said, stopping. “Eeuw.”

  “We don’t have to go in,” Clair said quickly. “Anyway, here’s something you might like. At least, it’s really pretty. It doesn’t seem to have a name, not that I have ever learned, but we call it the Magic Lake.” She pointed to Sherry and herself.

  We ran up the grassy slope to the edge of a round pool just below a waterfall that came from one of the mountain crevasses. I stared down in amazement. The water was not clear, it was iridescent. Rainbows, too many to count, shot through the spray of the fall, and the water roiled and bubbled. And I do mean bubbled. The bubbles rose up, dancing on the breeze, before they popped.

  “Ick,” I said, feeling my tongue squeeze. “I mean, it is pretty, but did someone poison it?” That was certainly common enough on Earth. “Or did someone throw soap in it?”

  Clair laughed her kitten squeak again, and Sherry chortled. “Nope. There’s no poison or soap in it,” Clair said finally, still grinning. “But people live in it. It’s perfectly safe to swim in, if you like. But what you see above — ” She waved at the rainbows and the bubbles and the continual boil and roil. “ — is what you see below.”

  “I don’t like to swim in it,” Sherry said, wrinkling her nose.

  I made a terrible face, thinking of tentacles grabbing your legs, or slimy things crawling over your skin.

  Clair knelt down at the edge, staring down so that her long white hair almost touched the churning water. “I
do,” she murmured. “But only in a certain mood. It makes your head feel odd, almost as if the people in there are singing to you.”

  “But not grabbing at you or anything nasty?” I clutched my hands close.

  “Oh, no. The people just look kind of like cracks in the water, sort of,” Clair said, wrinkling her brow. “Like facets in a cut stone, only they move. They don’t touch you, for they don’t have ... “ She waved down her body. “Physical self. Not like us, anyway.” She turned her head to look up at me. “Maybe you might want to try it someday?”

  I stared at her. “You mean I get to come back?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “DO I WANT TO?”

  Nothing but a bellow would do.

  “OH! AUGH! UNGH!”

  Sherry was bent over, laughing so hard she wheezed. I danced around, waving my arms, yelling “Yes! Yes! Yes!” until Clair laughed as well.

  And with that prospect, when Clair said she ought to return me so that the time-lag was not so terrible (whatever that meant) I could bear it without crying.

  THREE — I Get to Go Back

  Clair got me to my house just after we left. I realized two things when I went inside — one, the clock had only moved a couple minutes, and two, I had to go to the bathroom desperately bad.

  She came for me three more times, and each time we went to her world, and ran around in the woodland, or sat by the lake and talked. Talked about books, and what kind we liked and why. It seemed that there were few story books here, at least that Clair could get; the library she referred to had either histories or magic books.

  I told her and Sherry (who listened with her eyes wide and round) all my favorite stories, ones I’d read over and over, and when I ran out of those, I made up my own stories. They seemed to like those just as well. When the sun began to set, Clair returned me to smog-choked, electrically lit, cement-covered Los Angeles.