Aisling

by Nicole Delacour

  A boulder passed overhead with a trail of dust like a slow moving comet. The space skimmer jumped against the stone sending cracks down its sides when the skimmer flew further away. Some large rock spun upon opposite axes revealing brilliant amethyst crystals that glistened and crumbled before her eyes. The vibrant color lingered in her mind as the geode spun away. A whistle echoed in the distance, and a small pinpoint ball of light flashed. Glittering rays of light reached out scattering veins of color across the darkness in slow motion. Pulsing around them in blues and greens, Jess watched though the light faded back to the glow almost as quickly as it had formed. When Jess moved to push herself from Kilpeni, he held tightly until her fingers wrapped around his hand, and he slowly removed the other arm circling her waist, so that she could stretch out and float less than an arm’s length ahead of him.

  “Finally?”

  Kilpeni looked at her in uncertainty. A single eyebrow rose. “Finally, what?”

  “You said I finally listened. Back in the second dimension – back in the beginning, you said finally, I listened.” Jess softly said, “Why finally?”

  They spanned the loop while he delayed. His face slipping between knotted brows and a frown. “Nothing. It meant nothing.”

  “It did,” she protested.

  “No, it was hyperbole.”

  Glaring at him though she did not release his hand, Jess said, “You wouldn’t have said it without reason. You’re not exactly used to talking to people.”

  “I’ve spoken with hundreds.”

  “Sure, and the last person you spoke to that wasn’t the Compass before me was how many centuries ago?” she retorted.

  Twirling to move ahead of Jess, Kilpeni sent them slightly off course. He leaned backwards and pulled her closer to him. They tumbled through space. “Aisling aren’t meant to be solitary creatures. We’re meant to interact with each other in silence, but we have always spoken to our wards. There is an extraordinary amount of comfort one can draw from listening and from speaking.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone else hearing voice – well, anyone who wasn’t crazy.”

  “Dreams.” He stared past her into the absence. “All those faces that have been seen – voices that have been heard. It’s so easy to twist them to say what needs to be said.”

  Jess’s eyes softened as she shook her head. “I haven’t dreamed for a long time.”

  Wrapping his arms once more around her waist, he breathed into her hair. “I know.”

  A flare of light burned out into space like an hourglass. Trails of light and fire twirled, collapsing back down into long cords of bright light that swirled like the beacon of a lighthouse calling them home, but the threat of what waited ahead screamed within Jess’s mind. Pulling anything that drew near from its orbit, a blustering cloud of debris formed. Tracing their course, Jess paled when the trail led them straight into the mouth of the black hole.

  “Kilpeni!” she shrieked, and large wings grew forth from his flesh, but no matter how furiously he struggled, their course would not be deterred.

  “There shouldn’t be any other celestial bodies here. It has to be the stone,” Kilpeni called to her over the roar that grew as they neared the event horizon. There was no doubt that the strange, too loud mass was as unnatural to the sixth dimension as Jess and Kilpeni were themselves.

  “I don’t want to die!”

  Increasing the closer they came to the clouds and pillars of light, the gravity dragged them in. A dark form stretched in the center as they neared the circling debris. An Aisling that stood before them as a giant could not possibly remember the familiarity of a ward’s flesh. There was little human left. The gigantic form loomed with veins of light stretched throughout and a force pulling at its core consuming anything and everything that drew near. A near inaudible howl echoed out from within the monstrous void through which stars spewed forth and were quickly swallowed.

  “Where is the stone?”

  Though Jess could hear his voice, the words were meaningless to her in the face of this unstoppable force. In each of the previous dimensions, there was some aspect through which she had been capable of grounding herself. Here, Jess found no comfort in any part of the colossus that towered as an enormous sphere of blackness that sent forth light while consuming everything within its reach. Fire could be tempered. Men could be killed. Stones lifted. There was nothing that would end this horror. Even faced with an equal force, the hole would only grow.

  “Make him open a portal! We’re going to die.” She held tightly to the stones that fluttered against her chest with one hand while she dug her knife from her pocket. “We can’t beat this! Kilpeni, - oh God, I don’t want to die.”

  “We have time. The Compass can form a portal anywhere. The speed is such that it would take us an extended period of time before we reached a point where you would be killed,” Kilpeni explained, but she glowered vehemently silencing him.

  “We’re dead the second we get close to the event horizon,” Jess roared. “The force will spread unevenly on our bodies and tear them apart. It is too small for anything else, and it’s getting bigger.”

  Her mind flew from thought to thought with only one repeating. Jess had no desire to die. She had never had any inclination to know what came after or any sort of suicidal tendency. She wanted to live, and this was made all the clearer staring at this impossibility. Though she had often toyed with poisons in her fictions, there had never seemed a reason to find a way for her protagonist to escape a black hole. Even the best British science fiction show could only utilize a transporting machine that had never met its match on Earth. Despite all her desires to the contrary, Jess was not capable of summoning a time traveling physician or his phone box.

  “We need to find the stone,” Kilpeni retorted. His dark eyes searched the upcoming manifestation; however, the stone was beyond his view and likely at the core.

  “You can become anything, can’t you?”

  Glancing down at her, he frowned. “I’m uncertain.”

  “Can you become anything I can think of?”

  “Uncertain,” he repeated.

  “Become a phone box!” she screamed. “Warp drive! You were with me! You saw them too! Become a time machine!”

  Rolling his eyes, his wings collapsed around them and slowly formed a blue British police box twirling as the pull increased. Within the confines of the newly formed ship, the pull lessened though it tugged on the outer shell. The arms that had surrounded her were gone, replaced with a warm orange glow and metal. Blue lights lit the floor beneath clear panes, and stairs led every which way. Thick wires looped down from the ceiling. For a moment, there was no black hole. For a moment, there was just a brilliant realization of a near ridiculous dream. Jess ran a hand over the rim of the gramophone.

  “‘It’s bigger on the inside,’” Kilpeni muttered though he seemed thinner when Jess finally turned away to look at him. “I don’t think your imagination can get us away from a black hole.” He pulled out the monitor and typed a bit until the hole appeared on the screen swirling and growing.

  “Impossible! He did it in this – we'll have another version of this room, so we can,” Jess retorted before turning to stare at the levers. “This works like the one on television, right?”

  “That is where we come into a slight conundrum. You see, Aisling mainly focus on illusions. We make things appear to be a certain way, but aren’t necessarily so. However, Itzal turned himself into fire. On the reverse, he was a manifestation – not an Aisling. Additionally, flesh used to make canteens, so that doesn’t fall either way. In conclusion.” Kilpeni pulled a few levers, and the ship lurched. “This is the strangest – and largest – expansion that I have ever done.”

  All the air escaped from her lungs at his reluctance. “This has to work.”

  “It doesn’t though.”

  Jess glared without saying a work in response before throwing levers. The ship shifted and lurched, but she could not tell if the
black hole’s force caused the movements or if the switches did anything purposeful. Her eyes danced over the consol thinking before she ducked below and pulled open a small section of the metal to reveal the interior.

  “No matrix,” she noted and removed the pouch and held the pouch – stones and all – into the metal space.

  Kilpeni crouched hovered beside the keyboard staring at the monitor and seeking the tiniest glimpse of the stone. Catching sight of two sparks as they came within the last few minutes before crossing fully into the horizon, his eyes lit. The stones dropped inside and glowed to life as Jess slammed the metal tight and leapt to her feet. Kilpeni whipped around to stare unseeing at her as the power of the stones coursed to live within the metalized frame of his flesh. The circuits that hadn’t been flushed out previously filled in. Room and hallways only vaguely present connected. This was a ship built for six to fly, but an innumerable crew pulled the blue box from its doom and spiraled upward and outward.

  When Kilpeni went still, Jess approached him slowly and poked him. He blinked and focused. “There are two. I contained the stones for centuries when they slept, but I do not know how long I can keep them here while they stir.”

  “Use the tractor beam – pull them out or apart,” Jess suggested, but he shook his head.

  “They’ve already dramatically changed the composition of this dimension. If they move closer to the central pull, they risk merging and making recovery impossible. We will overpower them and shrink the hole.” His lips twitched into a smirk. “The builders of these ships practically invented black holes. Didn’t they?”

  “We’re going to die.”

  Kilpeni shook his head. “We’ll live. Strap down. This will be complicated.”

  She sat down and secured herself with three belts while Kilpeni rushed around the consol like a mad man. Jess could not contain her grin at the thought; it was a dangerous one with which she quickly became rather enamored. Kilpeni was her mad man with a box who had protected her from birth. The writers were right; the idea was rather consuming. The possibility that there was another creature that knew her better than anyone else – at times even herself – had always seemed an overly romantic notion, but faced with Kilpeni’s busy form, Jess could not help but understand why Narcissus had remained dedicated staring into the water hoping that for even a second his reflection would honestly look back.

  The ship swirled though everything was still inside. Two spots on the screen were circled, and dashed lines directed a path into the black hole to retrieve them. Spinning knobs, pulling levers, and typing directions into the keyboard, Kilpeni concentrated on the stones that buzzed in the back of his mind. There was, undoubtedly, an exceedingly high chance that the two stones – especially in their current state – had the capacity to destroy them all. At the same time, the likelihood that the Compass would open another portal for them prior to retrieving them was slim to none. His arm blazed: Righteo Stop Geronimo Stop. With that command, Kilpeni pulled the last switch and dropped the ship into the void.

  Closing her eyes, Jess clung to her seat as the wisps of hair that had managed to escape her ponytail flew with the diving force. Kilpeni held tightly to the consol; however, his eyes were narrowed focusing on the two specks through the ship. They spun together while the manifestation loomed out beyond visible in gravity only. The singularity grew more ferocious the closer he brought the ship. Though there was little Aisling to be seen, the manifestation had to be conscious and aware of their brethren being held so near. Despite the fury, his eyes slid to where Jess sat with her eyes clenched. Every risk was for her though the other was quite unaware – willfully so.

  “Jess,” he called to her as they drew near. She opened one eye and looked up at him. “I’m bringing us above them as close as I can. The hull will bend around you. Reach down and pick them up.”

  Both her eyes opened widely and filled with disbelief at his request. The floor beneath her feet became clear as Kilpeni lowered the hull ever closer to the vortex that could easily destroy them. Her left hand shook as she reached down and pressed the tips of her fingers against the floor. They met with cool metal, but Jess pushed onwards, and the floor gave, moving to engulf her hand like a glove against the pull of the stones below, but they were just out of reach. Belt by belt, she undid all three. Pressing her hands against the floor again, she reached down pressing her body against the ship’s floor until she grabbed hold of them at last and pulled them up and through the ship. The ship lurched as the black hole vanished. There was no collapse or expulsion of material. It was as if the hole had never been. Lifting herself, she opened her hands to reveal the two incommunicable stones.

  “They always seem rather unimpressive in the end,” Jess noted standing only to stumble as the ship shifted around her.

  Kilpeni placed the pouch with all the stones returned around her neck. “The most dangerous entities often do.”

  His curls tickled her neck when he laid his forehead to rest upon her shoulder. Around them, the ship melted away, and Kilpeni returned to his previous self. They spun in the center as the ring that had once orbited the black hole circled them.

  “If the next is without heat, how exactly am I going to survive?” Jess asked softly.

  Kilpeni sighed; his breath was warm against her skin. He lifted his head and gazed thoughtfully out at the debris that returned into the central pull before he replied, “How did you breathe underwater? How did you survive in space? How did we live through falling into a black hole? A world without water?”

  “What are we even going to do in the eighth? How are we supposed to fight those leeches?” She glanced down as the writing wove across his skin requesting aid from the Compass. “If they can form so many portals, why can’t we be transported directly to the stones? Why can’t they just reach through eight portals and get them all back?”

  “The Compass cannot sense the stones in any way. The Compass cannot touch them, see them, feel them, smell them…taste them. They are cracks in the core. Every God has limits,” he informed her. His eyebrows knotted as she laughed.

  “God doesn’t have limits.”

  “Lack of patience – wrath – inability to properly communicate,” Kilpeni smirked. “Even your gods are flawed.”

  Jess smiled in return. “An imperfect being could never imagine perfection.”

  The portal opened before them, and frozen crystals spewed forth. Before they slipped through into the seventh, Kilpeni leaned in close and whispered, “Then why can’t you?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shivers ran down Jess’s spine raising her skin. There wasn’t exactly light in the seventh, just a strange opacity that was illuminated from an unseen force that sparked. It was like some sort of crystallized lightning surged through the miasma. Tiny beads gathered in her hair before freezing as another pulse of light brightened the area around them. Kilpeni held her tightly to him as he guided them through. Glancing back at him, Jess considered requesting that he return to the form of a ship; however, her eyes caught upon a shadow that loomed above the portal that spiraled in upon itself. Kilpeni looked over his shoulder wondering what she had seen. His eyes narrowed upon lighting upon the figure, yet they softened when the stoic face shifted minutely revealing his exhaustion in the tightly drawn lines of his eyes and lips. The other’s shoulders fell before tensing as Kilpeni pushed through the murk towards the man upon a frozen throne.

  The figure sat upon a ledge of ice that spiraled upwards and branched out like trees. Wisps of vapor collected beside him were dark enough and various shades of green vapors formed leaves around him. On his glass-like throne, the finger leaned back with little care to what was occurring about him. His skin was grey, and gold hung in chains about his shoulders. Gold feathers wove throughout the long, thin braids of his black hair which fell far beyond his waist to the bands of gold that held his white skirt. If it weren’t for his bare chest, Jess might have believed him to be female. Long black nails tapped against the
arm of the throne clinking against the frozen vapors. His entirely black eyes made determining where he was looking rather difficult.

  “Do you know where you are?” Kilpeni called up as they circled around to float before the other.

  The manifestation laughed. The sound was rich and deep and stretched out into the coldness. “I know what I am, friend. Please, do not try to fight me or reason with me. I understand and recognize what must be.”

  “Do you?” Kilpeni asked gently, holding Jess around the waist with one arm while his other moved outwards towards the once-Aisling who sat before them.

  His eyes were dusted in gold that glimmered when he blinked to reveal the black had melted away to a honey brown. “I am familiar with death. I have died far more than you.” Kilpeni nodded, and his hand returned to Jess’s waist. The man turned his eyes to Jess and smiled brightly. “I do hope that you have not suffered too greatly on our account. Please believe me, we did everything we could to protect you.”

  “This is the greatest adventure I’ll ever have. Any suffering is worth seeing all this,” Jess informed him and found that the words were truthful. Kilpeni hugged her a bit tighter to his side, and she felt her heart jump a bit though she did her best to calm the frantic thing. He was her reflection, and she was his ward. There was nothing that could come between them.

  “Good.” The gray-skinned man nodded to himself before pushing off the chair to stand.

  Jess glanced at the world around them. Aside from the throne, little appeared differently closer to the stone than it had further out. “Were you simply waiting for us?”

  “Yes. I knew he would come for me,” the other replied, and Jess’s eyes caught upon cuts that ran along his long grey arms repeatedly calling to the Compass for help.

  Exhaustion dragged at Kilpeni’s face as he smiled sadly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Just tell me my name, friend. I’d like to know that much,” the other requested as his body became more translucent showing the small black speck that was the stone within him.