***
Tears stung my eyes and blurred my vision. Urszula wanted me to get moving, but I refused to budge from Karla’s side. Most of the Old Ones had already left. Only a few lingered, watching, but sharing no signs of emotion, as if they had none to share.
When Karla twitched, my hopes rose momentarily, but it wasn’t a sign of life. Not hers, anyway. It was that thing moving around inside her.
“You’d better get away from her or it will come after you next,” said Urszula.
“Sorry, but I ain’t leaving her,” I said, my voice oscillating through my sobs.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Urszula. “She’s not coming back. You see only flesh before you. Your woman is gone.”
I refused to listen, but I couldn’t understand why her body hadn’t faded. Wasn’t that how this place worked? When I thought about it, though, dead people on Earth don’t disappear. Fading only occurs in one direction—back to the previous existence. But Karla had moved on to the next world.
“I am warning you, do not hold her corpse so close or this Fellstraw will take you as its next host.”
“We have to … get it out of her,” I said, sobbing.
“Why bother?” said Urszula. “It is too late. She cannot be saved.”
“No. I can’t leave her here. Not with this thing inside her.”
“We can’t take her with us. That is out of the question. She is infested.”
That just spurred another cascade of tears. My whole body shuddered with grief.
“She’s alive somewhere, right? On the other side? In Scotland?”
“No.” Urszula studied my eyes gravely. “Not in Scotland. Only the Deeps.”
“But her body … on the other side … on Earth … it wasn’t touched. How could she die there?”
“Her soul has moved on. Same as those taken by Reapers. Same process. Different worm. Those who perish in the Liminality go to the Deeps. That is the path.”
“I still don’t understand. My soul visits this place. But I’m still alive on Earth. Right?”
“Yes, but her soul is two worlds removed now. That is the difference between you and her.”
I stroked Karla’s hair, picking out pebbles and bits of leaf.
“What about Heaven? Could she have gone there?”
Urszula shrugged. “I doubt such a place exists. There are rumors, but … even if it were real, I doubt it would be meant for those like us.”
“But the Old Ones … isn’t that where they go? The Singularity? Isn’t that …. Heaven?”
“The Singularity is a state of their own creation. It provides peace and camaraderie for the soul. But it’s no Heaven. Not in the sense that you are thinking.”
I bent over Karla and kissed her cheek, my tears dripping onto her face.
That thing rippled under the skin of her belly. Anger and disgust brewed in me.
I looked up at Urszula. “We need to get it out of her. Now!”
Urszula shook her head. “There’s nothing to be done. Let her go.
“I can’t … I can’t just leave her here with this thing still inside her.”
Urszula watched me weep. Something like pity took shape in her eyes.
She knelt beside me. “Put your hand flat over her stomach and bring it down slowly, but do not touch her skin.”
“But … what will that—?”
“Just do as I say.”
I lowered my hand and as it hovered over her navel, a powerful turbulence arose in Karla’s belly. A bullet-shaped bulge appeared, and pressed against the skin.
“Hold it right there,” she said, as my hand hovered an inch over her flesh.
Ursula placed the tip of her scepter right up against my thumb.
“Lower your hand slowly. Pull away quickly when I tell you.”
Waves rippled across Karla’s stomach. The pointy bulge strained, stretching the skin until it broke through.
“Now!”
I hesitated a moment too long and the thing looped a coil around my finger. Before it could tighten, Urszula slapped my hand away with her scepter and swirled it down the length of the worm as it surged out of Karla’s belly, have grown even thicker and more translucent than the beast that had left Yoric.
It coiled like a caduceus around the tip of the scepter. Karla yanked it free hurled the scepter as far as she could back towards the Sanctuary.
“Now come! Quickly. Unless you want to face the entire Frelsian army.” She held up her hands to the sky and her Lalibela looped down from the clouds, wings aglitter.
“Can … can we take her with us? I don’t want to leave her here. Please?”
Urszula took a long, deep breath. “If you insist. She is no longer … infested.”
Lalibela alighted gently on the road just outside the outer wall. Trisk landed his mantid beside her in a panic.
“They’ve crossed the valley and are starting up the hillside. You need to clear out now!”
I carried Karla’s body up onto Lalibela’s back. She was like a ragdoll in my arms. I still couldn’t stop sobbing. My face was drenched.
Urszula hopped into the saddle and slapped Lalibela’s side with her palm. The dragonfly’s wings buzzed into action and we lifted off, circling wide over the scrubby slopes where the retreating Old Ones were dispersing into the landscape, shepherded by Bern and Mr. O on the back of the other mantid.
As the wind peeled the tears from my face, I tried and failed to imagine how my soul could possibly persist in any realm of existence, now that they had all gotten so much bigger and emptier.
Chapter 46: Escape
Burrs and twigs studded the lace of Isobel’s pearly communion dress. The hem had been shredded by brambles and barbs. Not the best attire for climbing, but at least Papa had let her wear some sensible shoes. She had Karla’s sweater to ward off the chill breeze coming over the top of the ridge.
She paused to catch her breath at the edge of a recently logged clearing. Pitch oozing from the spruce stumps made it smell like Gwen’s house at Christmas. Papa, of course, would never have allowed them to glorify anything as pagan as a tree.
The ledges along the ridge top offered views up and down the loch and across the valley to the northern highlands. Before her stretched a patchwork of dark thickets, golden fields and meadows so green they glowed. They spread before a bastion of rumpled hills, their flanks shaggy with evergreens, tops crowned with brown heather. Lakes and ponds glittered like gems.
Down by the loch’s edge, two ambulances and four police cars had gathered along the hedgerows. Renfrew must have finally called the authorities, as he had been threatening to do all along. She had left in the nick of time.
She had a little bit of money in her purse, enough only for a few humble meals. Clothes would have to be borrowed or stolen from wash lines. A night at an inn was out of the question, regardless of whether an unaccompanied girl her age would be allowed to check in to such an establishment unquestioned.
There were plenty of farms dotting the landscape. There would be barns and hay. Maybe, if she was lucky, some kindly widow might be willing to give her refuge for a spell in return for a bit of companionship. She just needed to concoct a story benign enough to appease the old bag or perhaps one brutal enough to make her understand the need to keep her whereabouts secret. Maybe the truth would suffice.
All of this hypothesizing would amount to nothing if she didn’t keep moving. The sun was sinking low, and there would likely be men sent out to ‘rescue’ her and she would spend the night in some detention cell.
She could already see a helicopter banking around the end of the loch. She wondered if it had anything to do with their escapade. If so, she had to get back under the cover of trees. She could manage one night out in the open if she had to, as long as it didn’t rain.
She turned to go but found herself turning back towards the loch. She was reluctant to head down the ridge just yet, out of sight of those rescue vehicles and the little blue Ford.
She had left her sister down there, the only kin in the world she cared about, not to mention her friends.
She was glad for James to be finally getting the medical care he needed. She wondered why they had sent two ambulances. Perhaps such redundancy was standard protocol, an extra precaution. Surely, James was the only one down there who needed any medical intervention. What a worry wart she was.
A light went on across a hayfield in the valley. Already, the shadows were deep and dark in the creases of the land.
She hoped Karla would forgive her for running off without saying goodbye. But her sister was emancipated and no longer had to worry about Papa serving as her legal guardian. Isobel had three more years yet to wait before that would be possible unless she became a ward of the state. There was no way she could survive another day under Papa’s roof. She couldn’t count on the state to protect her. She couldn’t risk being forced to go back home.
She bit her lip and plunged into the fringe of spruce beyond the ledges. The trees were widely spaced here with beds of fine needles that were springy underfoot. There was no looking back now. She was committed.
As she started down the back side of the ridge, her eyes began to sting. No amount of blinking could stop the tears.
She told herself that this would only be a temporary separation. She would see Karla someday soon, and James and Ren and Jess as well, once all of the hubbub died down and she found her way back down south.
How she would get to Brynmawr was still a bit of a conundrum. She couldn’t afford a train or bus ticket. She would have to stow away on a lorry or maybe bum a ride with some Gypsy travelers, if anyone did that sort of thing anymore.
Details, details. Now was not the time to think of them. Distance and shelter were her priorities tonight. Some food too maybe, though for now she had no appetite.
Sooner or later, by hook or by crook she would find her way back to Brynmawr. She felt drawn there like a pilgrim. Her days on the farm were the only time in her life where she felt not a burden and a disappointment to the adults in her life but welcome in this world with a right to seek her own happiness. One taste of those freedoms was enough to spur an addiction. She desperately wanted another hit.
Of course, Karla might not be there, if the authorities went ahead and charged her with kidnapping her little sister. God knows that Papa could spin charges and alibis as adroitly as the most devious lawyer. Jessica and Renfrew might be entangled in the law as well, although clearly there were extenuating circumstances in this case—Linval’s murder, for one. It was difficult to see how Papa could spin his way out of that one.
In any case, Helen would certainly be around the farm and glad to take her in. Isobel was certain of that. And if the farm was being watched by the authorities or Papa’s associates and proved too risky a refuge, there were always Helen’s lesbian friends she could take up with. They were a fascinating and lively bunch and likely to be quite sympathetic to her plight.
Not even halfway down the hill and she already missed Karla so much. It would feel so strange not having her to talk things out every night at bedtime. She was used to having her sister help her sort her days, discussing all manner of topics from the trivial to the profound.
But all separations were temporary. She would catch up with her sister one way or another; in one world, one life or the other. She came to the end of the forest and clambered over a stone wall, her eyes on the valley before her, and the lights of the farm houses flicking on across the landscape like evening stars.
Chapter 47: Mourning
Lalibela glided under a thickening bank of clouds, skimming low over a boulder-strewn moraine. Mists obscured the glaciers but I could sense their presence in the wind. A deepening chill sank into Karla’s limp body, draped over the saddle before me.
As desperate as I had been to bring her up to the glaciers, reality began to penetrate. What was the point? There was not a hint of life left in her body. She would never become a Freesoul. Her soul was long gone, beyond saving and the poor dragonfly was struggling against the cold and fog for no reason.
I tapped Urszula’s shoulder. “Turn around.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
She twisted around in the saddle, eyes probing. “Then I will bring you to Neueden.”
“What? No.”
“Then … where?”
But I had no alternative destination in mind. I just wanted to vanish from everywhere all at once. I sighed long and slow. “How about you take me to the hollow? That place … with the pond.”
She nodded and slapped her scepter against Lalibela’s side. We banked sharply over the tarn and circled back around, swooping low over the thinly forested slopes, passing over a group of Old Ones who had paused to rest. Bern waved up at us from the back of Mr. O’s mantid.
Urszula steered Lalibela wide around Frelsi. Advance elements of the retreating army were just now reaching the outer walls of the city. They had clearly taken some losses. Fragments of shattered decking dangled from the backs of several Reapers. Officers struggled to maintain order among the ranks of foot soldiers anxious to get behind the city walls.
It wasn’t just our diversion that had influenced their retreat. They had taken a beating from that thin line of defenders and their insect allies. These Dusters would be dangerous if they ever got their act together.
So we descended deep into the valley, over a landscape scarred from battle and strewn with dead spikers, soldier ants and the occasional mantid and Reaper. Urszula brought me back to that little box canyon at the base of the foothills.
As I clambered down off the dragonfly cradling Karla’s body in my arms, Urszula stood atop her saddle.
“Bury her quickly and come with me.”
“No.”
“You cannot stay. It is too exposed. Frelsians may be out for retribution.””
“I don’t care. I need to be alone … with her.”
Urszula tilted her head and studied me, before saddling up and flying off. I watched her disappear over the canyon wall, sorry I had to be so gruff with her, but I didn’t have much control over how I felt.
I tumbled back to Scotland. I was in the grass at the edge of some lake. Karla lay beside me. Jessica and Renfrew were all distraught over Karla and wondering where Isobel had gone and how they were going to break the news to her. When I heard loud sirens coming closer, I ducked back into the Liminality as ripple went all through my insides.
I picked up Karla and carried her to the base of the majestic weeping willow I had transformed from a scrawny shrub. I used my sword to loosen the dirt and cut through the roots, scooping out the loose stuff with my hands. It took me hours to dig a decent grave. Not quite six feet under, but maybe four.
I gathered some strips of bark and went to work Weaving. The bark responded readily to my will, expanding, dividing and interlacing into a weft the size of a bedspread. I wrapped Karla in this shroud, jumped down into the hole and laid her gently in the bottom.
When I climbed back out, for the longest time I just sat there, unable to bring myself to toss any dirt on top of her. I broke down after the first handful, but once I got going I kept at it until it was all filled in and an oblong mound of sand and silt marked her resting place.
Blinded with tears whose flow I could not stanch, I turned towards the little, dried out pond. When my vision started to warp, I thought it was from the tears, but actually, I was fading again.
I found myself in a hospital room with bright lights glaring in my face, surrounded by strangers in white coats—medical students playing doctor. Some of them gasped when I awakened and called over a more senior clinician to examine me.
It surprised me how good I felt. My breathing came easily, and I had this smooth buzz on from all the heavy-duty painkillers they had apparently put into me. It felt like I was actually going to pull through.
But it didn’t matter anymore. I had no use for this place called Earth. I had no interest in
existing in a world without Karla. I didn’t care what happened in this end of things. It had no relevance or meaning to me. So I pushed it all away.
In a blink, I was back beside the pond. I wandered over to the seat I had carved into the clay bank, stuck my sword in the mud and watched the wind play with the water.
Hours, I sat tracing the creep of shadow from one side of the canyon to the other as it clouded over and began to rain, a welcome change from the empty skies.
As the raindrops fell, I didn’t budge. I pulled out Urszula’s shroud and let it expand over my shoulders. I just sat there and watch the speckles accumulate in the dust. Rivulets filled and flowed in bursts and pulses, just like a living thing.
It was a warm rain. Warm as tears. I let the sky do my crying for me.
***
The rain stopped sometime during the night. I never faded, but I must have slept, because I dreamt of highways and body shops and train stations. I awoke with my face pressed into the mud.
I went down and washed up in the pond, weaving myself a fresh set of clothing from some of the reeds along the bank. Without even having to think about it, I gathered another bunch of bark and whipped up a pair of jeans and a hoodie, all black as if I were some freaking widower. I carried an armful of reeds back to cover my muddy seat and went back to staring at the pond and watching the shadows drift.
I couldn’t see myself hanging around this place much longer. Karla’s last words kept resonating in my skull.
“Find me, James. Promise you’ll come and find me.”
A bee came by to check on me about midday. Urszula keeping tabs on me, no doubt. I patted its head like it was a golden retriever. It didn’t appreciate the gesture, buzzing angrily and backing away, before flying off. At least it didn’t try to sting me.
Shadows crept. I got up after a while and went back to visit the sad little mound beneath the willow. It looked so stark and undignified, this pile of dirt, so I added a few decorative touches—daisies and ferns converted from stray tufts of grass.
A drone sounded over the canyon wall. Before the mantid even came into view, I knew who was coming to visit. The mends and tatters in Seraf’s wings gave her beats a distinctive rattle.