Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (49 page)

The military
vehicles had rolled in at nine thirty, their slow procession lead
by a group of probably four or five hundred foot soldiers. The
drone followed the troops, never showing their faces, pulling in
tighter on the building.

Nine thirty-six
and seventeen seconds. Hannah paused the DVR, because there, in the
boiling rubble, stood a little girl, perfectly unharmed, and all
about her billowed a dress of glardium weave. Frame by frame,
Hannah watched as the child was lifted up on the back of a great
beast of the void, Dannum, Pretchis … everything in between. Her
Stephanie, her Spiff, the star cloaked Princess of the
Infinite.

###

Now read on for
a preview of the second book in the series.

A novel by Damian
Huntley

Copyright 2016 Damian
Huntley, all rights reserved

She had felt such
despair at first. So much time lost looking for West, because the
world had come to feel truly empty without him. She had traveled to
their home, convinced that if she could reach out far enough, she
would hear him. She pulled down the glardium wall and lay naked on
the rills, pleading to the delvers to make her a channel for only
his voice.

She existed
without time, losing track of the days, the months she spent, her
body wasting away. When the darkness finally awakened in her mind,
it came as a manifestation of her worst dread. Not West’s voice. A
voice she had heard in all of her bleakest hours. Dannum, Pretchis,
and everything in between. His wordless utterances inside her in
the night, his tongue scraping at the walls of her will, drawing
her into herself, closing her off from reality.

She journeyed North,
joining a small whaling vessel in the waters off the coast of
Concepcion, disembarking at Arica. From Arica, she forged into the
Andes on foot, every fiber of her being thrumming with his call.
She was wretched, because she was beyond her own command, a husk
bent around his desire. She climbed with bleeding fingers, the
delvers screaming for sustenance. When she eventually stopped, it
was because there was nowhere to go. No energy to go back, and only
a sheer fall into the blackness ahead.

There was no
choice to be made except that which he desired. If there was
anything to recount from the fall, all of it was lost on Stanwick.
Nothing but pain. A few seconds of falling, then something cracked,
but she would be too disoriented to tell what part of her body.
More falling, then some jagged edifice would rip open the skin of
her hip. She would tumble on rocks, and instinctively catch a
finger hold, only to hang for a minute before falling yet
again.

When she hit the
ground, she was conscious, but barely; enough to imagine that the
final hundred feet of the drop had managed to pulverize and crush
the last couple of bones. Beyond that, her grip on reality managed
to find a whole new cave system to fall into all on its own. The
darkness took on a different hue, moved without any obvious cause.
She could see no light, but she could see that her nightmare had
edges. It had substance.

His words scratched in
the flesh of arterial walls, only in the language of the delvers.
Nerves firing, neurons chittering too fast for her to comprehend,
Dannum spoke to the drivers, the engineers. The vehicle was damaged
goods. They knew it. She had neglected herself, neglected them. So
they obeyed him, burrowing through her, shredding her, then
knitting the surface of her flesh to his immense form.

As he moved
through the network of caves, his body fed her, his little
parasite, ever hungry, selling her memories for a meal. Such a warm
meal though, his blood boiling. In time, when she was whole again,
he would allow her to see, but it would be many years till she
would be whole again. So much for him to see, through her. So many
lives lived.

He moved
mountains, drinking in the air of the new world, led by her
memories, for the light of Dannum shone bright on all that was
seen, and shone black on all that was unseen, and within and
without his light, time knew not its bounds, or so it was written.
He had been a different God then; Jealous and pernicious, but he
was such because his people were a proud and learned people. Beyond
Allim, he had become so much more than Dannum. In humbler minds, he
had learned humility. In minds deeply routed in the spirit, manna
or soul, he had learned compassion.

Onward, to amber waves
of grain. What new lessons could be gleaned from this new born
nation?

He had seen the place,
in her memories, in the minds of the delvers, … he knew it well
once he arrived, because he had always known, since his first
dream. And he dug down. Waiting. Waiting for the child.

“She’s sleeping?”
David cooed softly, unable to tell if Stephanie’s blanket was
moving. Stanwick walked over to the bed, resting a hand on the
child’s forehead. She opened her own mind up to Stephanie, just for
a moment. She wished that she hadn’t.

“Yes, she’s
sleeping.” Stanwick’s smile flickered, “We should leave her be.
I’ll set sentry alarms. I really need to show the rest of you
around the house.”

David waited by
the open bedroom door. Watching Stanwick stroke his daughter’s
head, kiss her goodnight, he felt safe.

Stanwick led
David back downstairs to the living room, “Come on, all of you.
Time for the grand tour.”

West rubbed his arms,
his eyes narrowing as he grimaced in the blue-white light. Behind
the clear wall, as far back as he could see, small shoots unfurled
their little leafy hands, heads of broccoli and cabbage peaked
unassumingly over the edges of gel filled containers and all manner
of greens and grains blanketed shelves which were stacked several
stories high with new growth, basking in the life-giving glow of
their own dedicated lamps.

“You going off
grid?” Cobb pondered, shielding his face from the special
lamps.

“Not me.”
Stanwick replied, still marching on, leading the others into the
depths of her home.

The farming
complex was a permanently unfinished work of art. When it was first
built, she had taken regular deliveries from farmers far and wide,
paying over the odds for wagon loads of feed, cattle, grain,
whatever they could send. She had worked the many acres of land
above ground, but it was never enough. She bought out farm
holdings, kept on the laborers, made sure they were well
compensated. In recent years, she’d managed to implement a high
level of automation, always fine tuning the process. A few years
ago, she had invested in a number of emerging technologies, and
with the development of those new tech sectors, the Stupins
Institute had suddenly flourished from glorified storage facility,
to state of the art repository of horticultural diversity.

“You do farmers
markets?” Cobb tried again, tapping the glass. He saw Stanwick’s
face reflected there, her expression bordering on murderous.

Charlene leaned
over the edge of the gantry, her stomach lurching when she realized
how far down the complex extended, “Joking aside, you got enough
down here to feed the five thousand, and then some.”

Stanwick
shuddered at the thought.

“You should
install an elevator.” David suggested, in what he felt sure was a
helpful tone. He watched as mechanical arms busied themselves,
pruning, planting and harvesting. Surely an elevator wouldn’t have
been beyond Stanwick’s ability.

“We could just
jump down though, right?” Cobb asked, “I mean, is that not what
this is about? We’re like indestructible now aren’t we?”

“The fall
wouldn’t kill you necessarily,” Stanwick replied, her tone flat,
“but without sustenance … if you were weak enough and immobilized,
you could die.”

Cobb sighed,
then an instinct took him and he acted upon it. Mounting the thin
handrail, he started to jog along the precarious beam, light
footed, hands in his pockets. The downward spiral of the walkway,
the smooth metal of the railing and the dim lighting all conspired
against him, but Cobb felt completely surefooted. He picked up his
pace, jumping a few feet through the air between strides, tapping
the gantry above him with outstretched arms. He ran a few more
paces, then rolled forward, tucking his head towards his chest,
lifting up on his hands and walking hand over hand.

“Come on
David,” Cobb yelled, his voice echoing through the chamber, “Show
me what you’re made of.”

David leaned
over the handrail and thought better of it, but then he felt a hand
at the small of his back and Charlene whispered in his ear, “I bet
we can give him a run for his money.”

The two of them
climbed up onto the metal bar slowly, cautiously and as Stanwick
and West watched, they took their first timid steps. David shuffled
his feet, easing the ball of one foot forward, dragging the heel of
his trailing foot, his arms out to the sides, his heart pounding in
his throat. He watched Charlene, his eyes on her torso, her careful
but steady motions. She seemed calm, and David took comfort from
her stillness, centering himself on her motions. Following
Charlene’s lead, he took one large step, then another, then
Charlene turned about and David panicked, his hip swaying out away
from the walkway. Charlene was there for him, closing the gap
between them with a graceful leap, grabbing hold of his hands
tightly. Punctuated by Cobb’s occasional whoops and hollers,
Charlene started to hum, then sing gently, broadening her steps,
pulling David slowly out of his comfort zone.

Stanwick
started walking again, “I do despair.”

West walked by
her side, watching David’s left foot crossing smoothly behind his
right, “What’s up?”

Stanwick
pointed at Charlene, “Between you and me, we’ve sired a couple of
half-baked losers.”

Charlene
back-stepped rhythmically, holding David’s fingers loosely as her
hips swayed, “Hey I heard that.”

“Yeah, you were
meant to. Loser.”

“What’s your
problem?” West asked, confused.

“She’s trying
to pull a Johnny Castle.”

“A what?”

“Dirty Dancing
… Johnny Castle … Do you not hear her singing?”

West laughed
raucously, amused by how offended Stanwick appeared to be.

Cobb’s
footsteps clattered on the metal as he ran back up towards them,
“It’s like a labyrinth down there. How long did it take you to dig
this place out?”

“I want to say
a day, but honestly, I was kind of out of it. It’s a long
story.”

West leaned
over the railing, “There’s still a way to go.” He sensed her
hesitancy, “You want to give us the short version?”

She began,
“Chile, eighteen ninety four…”

Quarter of an hour
later, Stanwick stood in front of a huge metal wall.

“He’s in
there?” West’s face was expressionless, which Stanwick read as
carefully contained fury. She nodded, holding her hand out towards
the glass panel in the center of the door.

Charlene
cleared her throat, “Just to be clear now, it’s not going to attack
us right?”

Stanwick nodded
again, “He’s not on lock down, but we are safe. He’s quite singular
in his desire.”

Cobb stepped
back slowly, “How big are we talking here?”

“If he’s
anything like the thing we saw on the hopper, I have no comparable
frame of reference,” David offered, “but shit is about to get
real.”

Cobb shrugged,
“Like Kaiju big? Godzilla?”

West nodded,
“Something like that.”

Cobb tried to
grasp the idea of being able to eat as much as he wanted, his
excitement growing, “So how does something even get to be that
big?”

Charlene
pointed back down the hallway they had just passed through, “You
noticed the food right?”

Cobb pressed
his point, convinced he had one, “Yes, I saw the food, but I eat
all the Cobb salad in the world, I’m not going to grow up to be a
big strong boy, I’m going to explode.”

“Mmm,” West
chimed in, “Nope, you would take on whatever form you decided to
take.”

Cobb looked
dubious, “So I could eat a couple of tons of lettuce and take the
form of a fennec fox?”

Stanwick’s hand
dropped to her side, “You’re being obtuse.”

“No, I’m just
trying to understand.”

West thought
about his question, “You couldn’t do it in a day…”

“That’s not
necessarily true,” Stanwick interrupted, “It’s quite possible for a
host to command the leeches to consume them almost wholly. They
work fast.”

West waved his
hands, trying to wipe away Stanwick’s comment, “Now who’s being
obtuse? That’s not normal.”

Stanwick
laughed, her frustration clearly mounting, “It’s possible though.
He’s trying to understand, and I would say that eating a couple of
tons of lettuce and become a fennec fox is preposterous, but not
impossible. The more pertinent question would be whether or not
you’d want to?”

Cobb frowned,
“Why wouldn’t I want to? Fennec foxes are awesome.”

Stanwick tapped
her head, “Cognitive scaling. It’s a headache.”

West nodded in
agreement, “The loss of neurons and glial cells is a delicate
matter, so any rearrangement of your brain structure is dicey.
Handle with care.”

Stanwick looked
to Charlene and David, “Any more questions, or are we ready to do
this?” Without waiting for an answer, she slammed her hand onto the
glass plate in the center of the wall.