Penult (Book Four of The Liminality)

  Renfrew sat next to his brother at the service. It was nice to see him somewhat reconciled with Ralph. It must have happened at the wake sometime after Karla and I had left, the process undoubtedly lubricated by the whisky that Renfrew’s doctor had forbidden him to partake.

  I never learned what slights or insults or acts of betrayal had led to their estrangement, but if nothing else, Sturgie’s death provided the nudge that enabled them to let bygones be bygones.

  Back at the house, I sat in the garden alone most of the rest of the afternoon keeping an eye on the front gate, hoping Karla would appear. Fiona brought me tea at four and then, when the clock struck five, a vodka and tonic. But I just sat there in a wicker chair, feeling small and staring out at the darkening world. The early blooming sunflowers that Karla had cooed over the day we arrived now looked ghastly to me, their gaping solitary eyes staring at me like a bunch of Cyclops. Everything had looked so green when we had arrived, but now green was just another shade of grey to me.

  If Karla had not gone off on her own, I could narrow the likely suspects down to two: Edmund and Wendell. I could only pray that neither wanted her dead. With Edmund, I was less sure. Yes, Karla was his daughter, but from what Karla told me, he had long ago condemned her to hell and would not hesitate to have her removed from this world.

  As for Wendell, why would he kill Karla? Sure, killing was what he did and he was good at it. But what possible incentive could that provide for me to go back to Root in aid of their cause?

  Sure, it would make me miserable and grease my skids back to the Liminality, but once there, what motivation would I have to fight Penult? I would throw every ounce of my will into tracking down her soul. And if she was dead, I had no idea where a soul like hers would end up. Would it be the Deeps, or was that just another way station between Root and whatever lay beyond? I did not know enough about the afterworlds to have the faintest clue.

  Wendell would have to offer me some smidgeon of hope to keep me in his thrall. A hostage situation served his cause better than murder. They could keep quiet until I had been driven back to the Liminality before spilling the beans. And then they could milk me with threats of torture and pain.

  To think that was the best case scenario I could conjure for an involuntary disappearance. It was better to hope that her leaving was voluntary, but my fear would not allow it, and I sank deeper and deeper into that garden chair.

  What if Edmund had followed us back to Brynmawr? Inverness was infested with Sedevacantists who knew Karla and could have spotted her on the street and us onto the train. What if he had her in one of his basement dungeons ready to do to her whatever he had done with Isobel? This was the possibility that seized my brain and refused to release it.

  I began to doubt that Karla would have stayed away voluntarily without a word to the ladies or a note to me, missing her best friend’s funeral, leaving her favorite shoes as well as well as most of the rest of her meager mementoes and possessions behind. She had been taken, that much was clear.

  These grave thoughts stirred only favorable feelings for the Friends of Penult. All they had ever asked of me was to stay in this world, mind my own business, and be happy. What was wrong with that? They seemed now like the good guys in this situation. Would they be willing to help me get Karla back? It would seem in their best interest to keep me happy, to keep me out of Root. But how would I even contact them? I had that card, but no address, no phone number. Were they watching me right now? Would it suffice for me to simply pray to them for help?

  I have no religion. I’m not one to pray, but I did my best.

  “Please. Whoever’s listening. Help me get Karla back and I’ll never go back to Root, not ever, if I can help it. I just want her to be safe. That’s all that matters. Please! Help her.”

  Dusk fell over the garden and I barely noticed. I sank deeper and deeper into that wicker chair. Its strands came to life and wrapped around my legs, tugging at my soul. Soon the garden itself was boiling with roots reaching ever upward.

  Helen came outside and noticed nothing strange. She saw only a drunk kid sitting in the dark. She helped me to my feet and my body, untethered, responded. The roots let me leave for now.

  I had drunk too much vodka to walk a straight path down the flagstones. Helen and Jess helped me into the house, up the attic stairs and tucked me into bed.

  As I lay on the futon, I prayed again to the Friends of Penult, but before I could finish, the roots had come for me in force. They slithered up through the floor boards and smothered my soul in their prickly embrace.

  Liminality, ready or not, here I come.

  Chapter 14: Ravaged

  Roots converged like guided missiles, joining to tear my consciousness free of my earthly body and drag it through the seams that separated our world from the Liminality. I descended through the netherworld between, twisting, tumbling, regaining my flesh at the bottom of a deep, dank pit that had the feel of a basement exposed by a bomb.

  Shaggy shreds of torn, inert root jutted from the walls, wafting in the draft. The foul vapors of tunnels infested with Reapers vented through the gaps.

  But I had no desire to enter the underworld. The surface was all that mattered to me now, as it was with any Hemisoul who knew of its existence. I wanted out of this ragged pit.

  As with every entry in the Liminality I was naked, but I did not bother to weave myself any clothes. I just got up and started climbing. When I reached the top and pulled myself over the rim, the sight that greeted me made me disoriented and queasy with doubt.

  Where was I? I recognized nothing. I expected the pitted plains—that scrubby veldt dotted with sinkholes. What I found was a jumbled mess, a wasteland of shattered rock and shredded roots, heaped and churned and gashed with gulleys. Chunks as large as city blocks had been ripped apart, upended and piled up.

  Here and there, a few undisturbed patches of plain loomed over the devastation like steep-shored islands. In the midst of each, lone obelisks jabbed into the sky like radio towers.

  I was drawn to them like a wasp to cola. I scrambled over jumbles of shredded root and shattered rock to reach the nearest island. I climbed its sheer face, using loops of root as handholds and footholds, hauling myself up onto what was once a flat patch of ground, but had now become a mini-plateau.

  The shrubs and soil on top were undisturbed apart from some bulges in the ground that ran radially out from the pillar. It stood on leg-like buttresses that jabbed deep beneath the soil into the bedrock and roots below, each as thick as my thighs. The main shaft reminded me of a neo-modern totem pole, its segments bearing abstract patterns, no faces. I placed my hand on the pillar and found it uncomfortably warm. Some patches were translucent and gave off a faint glow.

  I looked out over the sea of devastation that had been the pitted plains. Parts of the horizon looked sort of familiar. But entire mountain ranges and mesas were missing from the landscape I remembered.

  I could see no trace of the sprawling metropolis of castles and towers and spires that Luther had constructed at the base of the foothills. The land, it seemed, had opened up and swallowed it. Luthersburg, or its surface annex at least, was no more.

  Whatever had torn apart the plains had taken down many of the foothills and even some of the larger peaks, reducing them to low mounds of rubble. The nearest remnants were studded with broken tree trunks, many of them now raising their roots to the sky. Where the mesas had been, only stubs of rock remained.

  My heart leapt at the sight of the familiar bluffs that flanked the opening to my favorite sanctuary, the hollow ringed by cliffs with its pond and the creek that poured from a hanging valley

  At least now I had a destination. My refuge remained intact, or so it appeared from a distance. I climbed off the island and lowered myself back into the chaos.

  It was a hard slog over and around ridges and pits. In some of the deeper rifts I could see some evidence of healing. Some of the more motile roots had infiltrated the wound
s and meshed together. Much of the root mass closer to the surface was now inert matter, impervious to my attempts at weaving. Somehow, it had been killed, like flesh deprived of a blood supply for too long. Much of it was already crumbling into dust.

  In some places the roots were so jungle-like I could make no headway and had to backtrack. Some patches were unconsolidated. I would step on them and just sink into the tangles like quicksand and had to practically swim back to more solid terrain.

  The sound and stink of the tunnels now mixed with the breezes that swept over these ruins of the pitted plains. No longer was the surface insulated from the Reapers’ foul odors and utterances.

  I came to an area littered with the carcasses of insects and Reapers alike—most likely a battlefield. Many still bore saddles and riding platforms. I climbed atop the shell of a dragonfly and reached into a saddlebag. Inside, I found bits of manna, the sweet cracker-like food that the Dusters relied on for sustenance. The stuff looked like scabs, but had a nutty, sweet flavor, sort of like toasted sesame with a hint of honey.

  The thorax of the insect was pierced with several spears with long, flanged tails. Conical black points transitioned into four blades that ran down most the length of each shaft. They looked like giant arrows, but far too large to have been shot by any ordinary bow.

  Something moaned in the near distance. I looked up to see a lone Reaper a stone’s throw away, sniffing among the ruins. Whatever barriers had kept the wild Reapers underground had now been breached. All of the Liminality, above and below, had become their hunting ground.

  I moved away over ridges and into depressions that alternated like waves in a frozen sea. Chunks of plain had been overturned, rotated and crushed. I couldn’t imagine the scale of violence this entailed. This was far beyond the worst that could happen in an earthly earthquake. The Richter scale did not suffice to capture its magnitude.

  Had Karla seen all this? And still she wanted me to come back? What did she think I could possibly do? Make it all better? This was way beyond my ability to deal with.

  Though, maybe. Had I come earlier, before all this went down. Might there have been a chance to prevent it?

  Whatever the case, it was too late now.

  Once I reached the bluffs and passed between them, the destruction lessened. The land was far from undisturbed, but the damage here was reduced to seams and rumples no worse than what you might see after a significant, but more ordinary earthquake.

  The once mighty waterfall that had tumbled through a notch in the hanging valley had been reduced to a trickle. Boulders and rock slides had tumbled down from and reduced many of the surrounding cliffs.

  The creek still flowed weakly, but it was truncated, plunging into the underworld at a new waterfall at the brink of a deep crevasse. I was glad to see the pond remained, a little shrunken but intact. Across from it, stood the weeping willow I had woven from a mere stick stuck in the ground, looking strong with all of its boughs in place.

  I found what remained of my throne of mud along the high banks of the pond, partially filled with debris. My old sword remained where I had left it stuck in the mud. If it had been woven of roots, it probably would have come apart long ago. And if it was made of steel it would have rusted. But this blade was made of something different, some strange unearthly alloy. It bore a light coating of tarnish but no rust, and its blade remained as sharp as the day I found it deep in the tunnels of Root.

  Not that sharpness mattered for such a weapon. I had rarely used to slash or impale anything. I mainly used it to focus the weird inner energy, that manifestation of projected will, that some of us in the Liminality are able to harness and wield.

  It was nice to feel that hilt in my hands again. Urszula and the Dusters had their scepters, which were nothing more than carefully selected sticks. I had my sword and was glad of it.

  I felt less naked somehow holding that blade in my hands. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to finally weave myself some clothes. There was an outcropping of live roots, exposed along the bank of the pond that I had mined for raw material before. Unlike those I had found on the shattered plains, these tendrils responded instantly to my desires, shrinking, multiplying, re-arranging themselves into my standard dark blue hoodie and a pair of black jeans.

  I pulled them on and took a seat on my ‘throne’ after sweeping out some of the accumulated debris. So here I was, back in the Liminality, finally honoring the wishes Wendell and Zhang and Karla. Shouldn’t there be a welcoming party? Instead, it was just me and that lonely Reaper.

  I wondered what had happened to the thousands of souls that Luther had encouraged to come up to the surface, not to mention all the Freesouls and Hemisouls of Frelsi. This cataclysm had to have caused a lot of human casualties.

  The skies were vacant as well. There was not a Duster to be seen from here to the horizon.

  I listened to the wind whistle down the gullies, to the distant trickle of water, the far-off groaning of a Reaper.

  By being here, I suddenly realized that I had violated my promise to the Friends of Penult. Did they even know yet? Would that void the terms of my ivory card? Shit.

  For that matter, how would Wendell know that I had fulfilled his request? I needed to find Zhang somehow. I needed to get up to Frelsi or what was left of it. Someone needed to know I had come, if nothing else, to get Wendell to ease up on my friends, if he indeed was the one responsible for inflicting all that misery on us.

  But then again, was it better to keep mum and hope the Friends of Penult didn’t learn of my coming? Maybe this was a one shot deal, my coming here. Maybe I would never be back again and the Friends of Penult would be none the wiser.

  I gazed out past the bluffs at the now rumpled and barren plains. Had Karla seen all this? I couldn’t believe she had been in such a panic for me to come back here. What could I possibly have done? She acted like I was some kind of superhero.

  Sure, I could still weave myself a nice pair of jeans, but I couldn’t fix anything on this scale. I couldn’t repair whole mountain ranges.

  I leaned back on my mud throne, feeling just as grave and gloomy as I had on that wicker chair in Fiona and Britt’s garden. There was a grave beneath the weeping willow across the pond, a grave that I dug myself with a shovel woven from the same patch of roots I had mined for my clothes. I had once laid Karla’s body down into it on a bed of reeds, covered her with willow branches, covered her with dirt. But then, I had managed to find her in the Deeps, and with the help of Olivier and his ‘will bomb,’ resurrect her.

  I used to think of bodies as necessary prerequisites to sustain a consciousness. Now I knew they were just hunks of meat, loosely associated with the core of our being.

  I wondered if that original corpse of hers, the one that was ravaged by Fellstraw, still remained where I had placed it, or if it had ceased to exist once Karla shifted back to this realm. It was a mystery that would have to remain unanswered, because I wasn’t about to go and dig her up.

  I could only hope that her latest physical form was unharmed and that her soul was safe. Might she be here right now with me in the Liminality? If so, she knew where to find me. We had often told each other that if either of us made it back to the Liminality with the other, this pond would be our meeting place. I was prepared to wait here for as long as it took for her to show.

  I sat there in a daze, pitying myself, when a dark object came darting out of the hanging valley where the waterfall used to flow. It came hurtling at high speed in my direction.

  It sent my heart thumping. I took cover, ducking down against the bank. I sneaked a peek to find the creature hovering an arm’s length away. It was a honeybee.

  It landed and crawled over to me, raising up on its rear two pairs of legs, exuding a globule of nectar from its mandible.

  I drank my fill and patted its furry head, and sent it on its way. The Dusters, at least, would soon know I was back, if any Dusters remained alive in this shattered world. At least the
re are some bees left in this place. How did they always manage to find me so quickly, no matter where I roamed?

  I climbed back into my throne of dried mud and resumed my moping.

  ***

  Hours passed and still nothing happened. I felt a little miffed that no one but that one bee had come around yet to find me. If they were so desperate to have me back, you would think they would put a little effort into finding me.

  I was more than ready to fade. I couldn’t wait for my soul to get sucked back to Brynmawr and that lonely futon in the attic.

  The skies remained eerily devoid of mantids and dragonflies. Every other time I had come to the pitted plains I had always seen scouting parties of some sort. That did not bode well. Did that mean I had come too late? Had they all been exterminated? Was the war with Penult already over?

  I was hungry again and having already eaten my last crumb of Duster food, I rounded up some stray bits of root left over from weaving my hoodie and jeans. Some of them had already beginning to disperse, dragging themselves across the mud flats like inchworms, while others writhed in place like half-dead eels.

  I gathered them together and conjured myself a pulled pork sandwich, extra spicy on a sourdough roll. It wasn’t bad. The aftertaste was a bit earthy but it hit the spot. Maybe next time I should rinse them off first. But it was nice to know that I still had the knack.

  A beer would have hit the spot right then, but I didn’t have Lille’s skill for flavoring liquids. The best I could do was a paper cup of pond water that I managed to tinge kind of amber. No bubbles though. And it tasted like stagnant water.

  “Come on, Zhang!” I shouted into the hollow. My voice reverberated back. “You wanted me. I’m here. Show yourself! What the fuck?”