He stopped in mid-declaration. There was another sound competing for his audience of trees, this far less musical. He held his breath, to hear it better. It was coming from the summit of the mountain, or thereabouts: sufficient voices to suggest a cast of some substantial size was assembled there. No need to wonder what kind of drama was underway. The keening told all. It was a tragedy.
With his own voice now hushed, he started to climb again, the sounds more horrid the louder they became. It was only in fiction that pain made the dying poetic. In life, they sobbed and begged and ran with tears and snot. He had seen such spectacles countless times and did not relish seeing another. But he had no choice. The child might very well be up there somewhere—a child named for a goddess who brought dreams—and back in the balmy spring, in Missouri, his instincts had told him there was some significance in that naming. He’d lodged a little piece of his own dreams with the O’Connells as a consequence, which with hindsight had probably been an error. How much of an error the next hour or so would tell.
Meanwhile, there was the mystery of the voices to vex him. Was this the dying cries of pioneers, lost on the heights? He didn’t think so. There were sounds amid the cacophony he had never heard from a human throat; nor indeed from any animal that lived in this corner of reality, which fact had made him sweat, despite the cold. A sweat of anticipation, that perhaps the impulsive gift he’d made to Harmon O’Connell had not after all been so unwise, and that the Irishman’s daughter had led him, all unknowing, to the borders of his own promised land.
SEVEN
There was a crack in the sky; that was Maeve’s first thought. A crack in the sky, and on the other side of it another sky, brighter than the night in which she stood. She had seen the heavens produce many marvels: lightning, whirlwinds, hail, and rainbows—but nothing like the waves of color, vaster than the vastest thunderhead, that rolled across that sky beyond the crack. A breeze came out to find her. It was warm and carried on its back a deep, rhythmical boom.
“That’s the sea!” she said, starting towards the crack.
It was not wide, nor was it stable. It wavered in the air, as jittery as the flame of a lamp in a high wind. She didn’t care about the how and why of it; she’d seen too much tonight to begin asking questions now. All she wanted to do was cross this threshold, not because she feared the consequences of what she’d done earlier, but because there was a sky and a sea she’d never seen before waiting on the other side.
“There’ll be no way back,” Coker warned her.
“Why not?”
“It took a great Blessedm’n to make this door, and when it closes again it won’t be easily opened.” He glanced back down towards the battlefield, and moaned at what he saw. “Lord, look at that. You go if you want to. I can’t live with this.” He raised his hand in front of his face and a single razor claw appeared from his middle finger, gleaming.
“What are you doing?”
He put the claw to his throat. “No!” she yelled, and grabbed his hand. “All this dying, just because I said something I shouldn’t. It’s stupid.”
“You don’t understand the reasons,” he said bitterly, though he made no further attempt to harm himself.
“And you do?” Maeve replied.
“Not exactly. I know there’s some great argument between the families that’s so bad they’ve been slaughtering one another for generations. This wedding was supposed to be a seal of peace between them. And the child was the proof of that.”
“What’s the argument?” she said.
He shrugged. “Nobody knows, outside the families. And after this—” he looked at the corpse-strewn slope, “there’ll be fewer who know than ever.”
“Well it’s still stupid,” she said again, “killing each other over an argument when there’s so many things worth living for.” She still had hold of his hand. As she spoke he retracted the claw. “I lost my Papa tonight,” she said solemnly. “I don’t want to lose you too.”
“I’ve known Blessedm’ns less persuasive than you,” Coker remarked softly. His voice was tinged with awe. “What kind of child are you?”
“Irish,” Maeve replied. “Are we going then?”
She looked back towards the crack. The ground at its base was shifting, the stones and trampled snow softened in the heat of whatever power had opened this door, drawn through the threshold then pouring back again. She started towards it fearlessly but as she did so Coker laid his hand on her shoulder. “Do you understand what you’re doing?” he said.
“Yes,” she said, a little impatiently. She wanted to walk on that ebbing dirt. She wanted to know how it felt. But Coker hadn’t done with his warnings.
“Quiddity’s a dream-sea,” he said, “and the countries there are strange.”
“So’s America,” she said.
“Stranger than America. They’re born from what’s in here.” He tapped her temple with his finger.
“People dream countries?”
“More than countries. They dream animals and birds and cities and books and moons and stars.”
“They all dream the same books and birds?” she said.
“The shapes are different,” Coker replied somewhat hesitantly, “But—the souls of things are the same.”
She looked at him in befuddlement. “Whatever you say,” she replied.
“No, it’s important you understand,” he insisted. He paused for a moment, frowning as he dug for enlightenment. Then it came. “My father used to say: Every bird is one bird, and every book is one book, and every bird and every book is one thing too, under the words and the feathers.” He finished with a flourish, as though the meaning of this was self-evident. But Maeve simply shook her head, more confounded than ever. “Does this mean you’re somebody’s dream?” she said.
“No,” Coker told her. “I’m the child of a trespasser!”
Here at least was something she grasped.
“Quiddity wasn’t meant to be a place of flesh and blood,” he went on.
“But people get through?”
“A few. Tricksters, poets, magicians. Some of them die. Some of them go crazy. And some of them fall in love with the things they find, and children come, who are part human and part not.” He spread his arms and his wings. “Like me.”
“I do,” she said with a sly little smile. “I like you a lot.”
But he was deadly serious. “I want you to know what you’re doing when you step through that crack.”
“I don’t mind being a trespasser.”
“You’ll be living in a place where your people can only come in dreams, and then only three times. The night they’re born. The night they fall in love. And the night they die.”
She thought of her Papa then, who’d spoken of floating in a calm sea with her Mama beside him. Had that sea been Quiddity?
“I want to go,” she said, more eager than ever.
“As long as you understand,” he said.
“I do,” she told him. “Now, can we go?”
He nodded, and she was away in a heartbeat, stepping lightly over the shifting ground.
If Buddenbaum had learned anything in his years of wandering, it was that things mundane and things miraculous were not, as reason had it, irrevocably divided. Quite the reverse. Though the continent was everywhere being measured and possessed by unmagical minds, its sacred places overrun, and their guardians driven to drink and despair, the land was too deeply seeded with the strange to ever be made safe for the pioneer.
The proof was spread before him on the mountain slope. Creatures from the far side of sleep, breathing the same air as the brave souls who’d come to conquer this land, dying with the same stars overhead.
Walking among the corpses, he felt the itch to hike back down the trail and fetch a few of the pioneers back, to show to them that they were not the only travelers here, and that no law nor God nor well-laid pavement would keep beasts like these from coming again. He might have done so too, but for the girl. Sh
e was here somewhere, his instinct told him, and alive. Whatever mischief had brought this massacre about, she had survived it. But where?
Up the slope he climbed, pausing now and again when a particular bizarrity caught his eye. He had been a student of the occult for too long to doubt the origin of these species. They came from the Metacosm, the world of Quiddity. He had never been able to find his way into that place himself, but he had collected over the last many decades several unique works on its geography and zoology, most of which he knew by heart. He had even sought out and interrogated men and women—most of them in Europe, and most magicians—who claimed to have found their way over the divide between this world, the Helter Incendo, and into that other. Some of them had proved to be living in a state of self-delusion, but there had been three who had convinced him beyond reasonable doubt that they had indeed ventured onto the shores of the dream-sea. One had even voyaged across it, and had lived among the islands of the Ephemeris a life of sybaritic excess, before his mistress had conspired to strip him of his powers and return him to the Cosm.
None of these travelers had profited from their journeys however; they had returned wounded and melancholy. The sweet simplicities of God and goodness no longer made sense to them, and human intercourse gave them no comfort. Life was meaningless, they had all then concluded, whether in this world or that.
Buddenbaum had listened carefully, learned what he could, then left them to their wretchedness. If ever he swam with spirits, he told himself, or walked upon a shore where dreams took living form, he would not whine about the absence of God. He would lead those spirits and shape those dreams, and gain in power and comprehension until time and place folded up before him.
He was perhaps closer to realizing that ambition than he’d thought. A door had opened to let these creatures through; and if it was still ajar, then he would take his chances and step through it, unprepared though he was.
He went down on his hands beside some pitifully wounded creature and whispered softly to her.
“Can you hear me?”
Her speckled eyes flickered in his direction. “Yes,” she said.
“How did you get here?”
“The ships—” she replied.
“After the ships. How did you get into the Cosm?”
“The Blessedm’n opened a way for us.”
“And where is this way?”
“Who are you?”
“Just tell me—”
“Are you with the child?” she said.
Something about the way she asked this question cautioned Buddenbaum.
“No,” he said, “I’m not with the child. In fact—” he studied the woman’s face as he spoke, looking for clues, “in fact I’m here . . . to kill the child.”
The woman grimaced through the pain. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, do that. Slaughter the little bitch and give her heart to the Blessedm’n.”
“I have to find the bitch first,” Buddenbaum said calmly.
“The way. That’s where she’ll be.” The dying woman turned her head and stared up the slope. “Do you see the tent?”
“Yes.”
“Beyond it, to the right, there are rocks, yes? Black rocks.”
“I see them.”
“On the other side.”
“Thank you.” Buddenbaum started to rise.
“The Blessedm’n,” the woman said, as he did so. “Tell him to say a prayer for me.”
“I will,” Buddenbaum replied. “What’s your name?”
The woman opened her mouth to reply, but death was too quick for her. Unnamed, she died. Buddenbaum paused to close her eyes—the stare of the dead had always distressed him—then he headed on up the slope towards the rocks, and the way that lay concealed between.
As she stepped over the threshold, Maeve took one last look back at the world she had been born into. If Coker was right, she would not see it again. Another hour and it would be day. The weaker stars had already flickered out, and the bright ones were dimming. There was a faint light in the east, and by it she could see a man between the rocks, climbing with the gait of one who could barely keep from breaking into a dash. Though he was still some distance away, she recognized him by his coat and cane.
“Mr. Buddenbaum,” she murmured.
“You know him?”
“Yes. Of course.” She took a step back the way she’d come, but Coker caught hold of her arm.
“He’s attracted some attention,” he said.
It was true. Two of the survivors of the bloodshed were following—one a dozen paces behind Buddenbaum, the second twice that—and by the state of their robes and blades it was plain they’d claimed more than their share of lives. In his haste, Buddenbaum was unaware of them, though they were closing on him fast. Alarmed, Maeve pulled away from Coker and stepped back over the threshold. The unstable ground, excited by her agitation, splashed up against her shins.
Coker called out to her again, but she ignored him and started down between the rocks, shouting to Buddenbaum as she went. He saw her now, and a smile crossed his face.
“Child!” Coker was behind her, yelling. “Quickly! Quickly!”
She glanced over her shoulder at the flame of the crack. It was wavering wildly, as though it might extinguish itself at any moment. Coker was standing as close to the crack as he could get without crossing over, beckoning to her. But she couldn’t go; not without hearing from Buddenbaum some words of explanation. Her father had suffered and perished because of a dream this man Buddenbaum had sown in his heart. She wanted to know why. Wanted to know what the shining city of Everville had meant to Buddenbaum, that he had gone to such trouble to inspire its creation.
There was only half a dozen yards between them now.
“Maeve—” he began.
“Behind you!” she yelled, and he glanced back to see the assassins racing up between the rocks. With but a moment before the first of them was upon him, he took the offensive and struck out with his cane, bringing it down on the man’s blade and dashing it from his hand. The blow splintered his cane, but he didn’t cast it away. As his attacker bent to snatch up the fallen sword, Buddenbaum drove the broken cane into his face. He reeled backwards, shrieking, and before the other assailant could push past his companion and catch his now weaponless quarry, Buddenbaum was off again towards the crack.
“Stand aside, child!” he yelled to Maeve, who was frozen now, unable to advance or retreat. “Aside!” he said as he came upon her.
Coker let out an angered yell, and she looked up to see him stepping back through the crack, whether to aid her or to block Buddenbaum she didn’t know. For a moment, picturing the look of hunger on Buddenbaum’s face as he’d shoved her aside, she feared for Coker’s safety. Buddenbaum knew what the door opened onto, that was plain, and equally plainly he’d not be denied whatever wonders lay there. He struck Coker four or five times, the blows powerful enough to crack Coker’s nose and open his brow. Coker roared in fury, and seized hold of Buddenbaum by the throat, pitching him back the way he’d come.
Maeve had started to get to her feet, but as she did so a tremor ran through the ground, and she raised her head in time to see the crack convulse from one end to the other. Shaken by the violence in its midst, the flame was flickering out. “Coker!” she yelled, fearful he’d be trapped in the closing door.
He looked her way, his face all sorrow, and then retreated a step or two until he was safe from the threshold. The sliver of Quiddity visible through the crack was narrower by the moment, but her thoughts weren’t of the voyages she’d never take there. They were of Coker, whom she’d known only half a night, but who’d been in that little time her savior and her tutor and her friend. He stared through the closing door like a beaten dog, so forlorn she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Eyes stinging, she averted her gaze and Buddenbaum rose into her sight, his face spattered with Coker’s blood.
“Never!” he was yelling, “Never! Never!” and raising his fis
ts he stumbled back towards the narrowing crack as if to beat it open again.
In his passion he had forgotten the second assassin. He had clambered over his sprawled companion, and now, as Buddenbaum stepped onto the contested ground between slope and shore, the assassin lunged and drove his weapon into the enemy’s back.
The wounding stopped Buddenbaum in his tracks. He let out a sob, more of frustration than of pain it seemed, and reached behind him, grabbing at the weapon and hauling it out of his flesh. As he did so he swung round, moving with such speed that his wounder had no time to avoid his own blade. It opened his belly from flank to flank in a single slice, and without a sound the man fell forward, his guts preceding him to the ground.
Maeve didn’t watch his final moments. Her gaze went back to the crack, unable to keep from looking Coker’s way one final time, and to her astonishment she saw him stepping forward and reaching through the gap, jamming his arms in the door before it could seal itself. Then he pressed forward and began to elbow the crack open a little way, pushing first his head, then his thickly muscled neck, then a shoulder, through the fissure.
It caused him no little pain, but the sensation seemed only to fuel his frenzy. Thrashing as he went, he dragged his body through the opening, inch by agonizing inch, until his wings met the crack. Though they were folded behind him as tight to his body as they’d go, they were too bulky to be pulled through. He let out a pitiful cry, and turned his eyes in Maeve’s direction.
She started towards him, but he waved her away. “Just . . . be . . . ready—” he gasped.
Then, drawing a single, tremendous breath, he pressed every sinew into service and began to push again.
There was a terrible tearing sound, and blood began to flow from his back, running down over his shoulders. Maeve shuddered in horror, but she could not look away. His eyes were locked with hers, as though she was his only anchor in his suffering. He rocked back and forth, the muscle that joined wings to torso torn wide open, his body shuddering as he visited this terrible violence upon it.