Mélusine (53 page)

"Okay," I said. "Let's get going."

"There's a place…" He got up, turned back to the hill we'd gone up the night before, and started walking. I grabbed our bag, kicked our jury-rigged bedding around a little, because if there
was
somebody out here, I didn't want to meet 'em, and hightailed it after Felix.

He went straight up the hill and down the other side like he was walking through Richard's Park on his way to the Cheaps. I went after him, keeping a sharp lookout even though I'd never seen a ghost in my life and didn't really expect I was going to start now. And it wasn't as much like the Boneprince as I'd been ready for. I didn't feel like somebody was watching me—although I kind of think that might've been because they were all watching Felix—and there really just wasn't nothing to show this wasn't an ordinary valley like septads of others all over this part of the country. I mean, if I hadn't been with Felix, I'd never've known what I was walking on top of. And while that's spooky its own self once you start thinking about it, it still ain't a patch on the Boneprince.

So we walked for a while, and I saw a couple of rocks that were maybe a little too regular to be natural, but nothing I was sure of, and then in this one particular spot that didn't look no different to me than any of the rest of it, Felix stopped and said, "Here."

I didn't say "Where?" both because I knew what he meant and because I didn't want to get tangled up in cheap cross talk like a pair of pantomime clowns. But, powers, it was just a patch of ground like every other patch of ground in this fucking valley. Except for maybe having more nettles than average, but I wasn't surprised at that one little bit.

"Okay." I looked at our piece of ground. It was flat—it had that much going for it anyway. I looked at Felix and found him looking at me like a lost puppy again. "What?" I said.

"I don't know how to design a maze."

"Ain't your crying friends told you what they want?"

"Just that they need a maze."

"Well, fuck," I said and couldn't help my head turning to see what that damn storm was up to. It kind of sneered back at me, but it was headed our way all right. I looked back at Felix. "They say anything about how big they need this maze to be?"

He shook his head.

"Right." I didn't know nothing about the rules for ghosts, but I did know all about the curtain-mazes at the Trials of Heth-Eskaladen. "Is where you're standing where they want the center?"

He nodded.

I yanked out the grass in a circle around him, making him move so I could get the stuff under his feet and scratching a big X in the dirt. I made my circle big enough for a living person because I figured I'd better not count on something smaller being any use to them. Then I knelt down and used some of the grass I'd just pulled out to diagram a maze. Felix watched like I was the hocus instead of him. I didn't make it big, and I didn't make it complicated—one path with two dead ends was all—but it still took me longer than I liked to get it laid out. Then I made Felix put his gloves on, since he didn't seem like he was in any state to recognize a nettle without it stung him, and we both started pulling grass for all we were worth. And all the time them clouds were sneaking up on us, getting bigger and blacker and uglier as they came.

black clouds hanging over us like cult preachers shouting eternal damnation and the crawling fires of Hell. We'd both kind of ended up hunching our shoulders against them, because they really did look like they were just going to fall on us and squash us flat.

But finally we got the maze to where you could see that was what it was, and I straightened up and stretched until my spine popped—powers, my ribs hurt—and said to Felix, "What now?"

He looked up from his crouch, his eyes wide like a startled cat's, and I knew he didn't have the first fucking clue who I was. I realized after a second I was holding my breath waiting for him to start screaming or something, but he didn't. He just stared, but I could see he was tensed to run.

"Felix," I said. "Felix!"

He rocked back a little on his heels, like I'd hit him, but he blinked and frowned at me, and I knew he'd come back a little closer to where I was at.

"It's done," I said, slow and careful, like I was talking to Devie and trying to get her to understand before Keeper got pissed off. "What should we do?"

There was that pause again, where he was trying to work out what I'd said and what he needed to say back. "Move," he said. He stood up and walked out of the maze. I followed him, and I got to admit, since there wasn't nobody around to care if I was tough or not, I was moving at a pretty good clip.

He stopped about a septad-foot back from the edge of our stupid little maze and stood watching it like he was waiting for the curtain to go up at the Cockatrice.

What else could I do? I stood and waited with him.

Now you got to understand, first to last, I didn't see nothing. I mean, the grass was tossing around, but there was a storm coming, and you wouldn't expect nothing different. I mention it because Felix
did
see something. Like I said, whatever it was, I couldn't see it, but I believe it was there. And I got good reason.

We hadn't been standing there but maybe a quarter of an hour when it commenced to rain. I said some things under my breath, but there wasn't no shelter anyways, so there wasn't no point in trying to get Felix to move. And within a couple minutes, we were both soaked to the skin, and I might as well just get past it. I stood there, my shoulders all hunched, and every so often I'd push my hair out of my face again and try and clear the rain out of my eyes. Felix just stood and watched. He didn't seem to notice the rain. He sure as fuck didn't care.

So we stood there and stood there, and I guess every ghost in Nera was going past us, only I couldn't see them. And I got wetter and colder and started wondering kind of not quite idly about the Winter Fever, and we were still standing there like we were waiting to put down roots.

And all at once, Felix started for the maze.

There was this long moment where I was just gaping at him, stupid as a sheep, so he was halfway to the maze entrance before I flung myself after him, and he practically had his foot across the threshold when I caught him.

"What're you
doing?"
I yelled over the rain, and tried to drag him back. I wasn't expecting no trouble, because he was taller than me but way skinny, and besides I'd got used to him doing what he was told.

second that he was swearing at me in about the thickest Simside cant I'd ever heard in my life.

What the
fuck
? I thought. The only thing I was sure of was I wasn't letting him go in that maze we'd made for dead people, so there was an ugly couple minutes where we proved he didn't know as much about brawling as I did, and, Kethe, we ended up with me sitting on him again. I'd got his wrists, and he was screaming up into the rain, "They said I could come! They said they'd let me come!" And the way he sounded, you'd've thought we grew up together.

I just fucking did not know what to do. I mean, I purely had no idea. I knew I couldn't let him get into that maze because anywhere those people wanted to take him was no place he should be going, and my understanding was he'd end up dead. But I didn't know how to
deal
with him, how to get him to quiet down and not make me hurt him. Because I
was
hurting him, I knew it, but there just wasn't no other way. And he was screaming and fighting like I wouldn't've thought he could—no science to speak of, but good distance on pure fury—and I had to wonder if this had been down at the bottom of the well the whole time, like the Vraaken Bear chained in that cave in one of the stories about Brunhilde.

The only thing I had going for me was I knew how to use my weight And finally I got scared and desperate enough to use a couple tricks I'd learned from this friend of Keeper's, and Felix lay still, panting, but glaring like murder was too good for me. I just hung on, kind of dazed from him having clipped me across the ear but good before I got the hold I wanted—but more I guess just from… I don't know, but I'd never imagined him being like this. And where the fuck had that Simside cant come from? It was like all this time I'd been standing on a trapdoor over an alligator pit and I'd never known the trap was there, much less the gators. And now here I was down in the water and the gators were hungry. Kethe, he was giving me the bright blue horrors.

And he wouldn't say nothing. I tried asking him stuff, like where it was his crying people were going to let him go, but his jaw was set, and he just lay there, every muscle tensed up and his weird eyes like bonecutters. I knew how much he didn't like to be touched, and I knew the longer we stayed like this, the worse he was going to hate me. But I couldn't let him go into the maze. Maybe nothing would've happened, maybe his crying people were lying to him—but maybe he would've fallen down stone dead or disappeared or something. I didn't know, and I was scared stiff I might have to find out. So I hung on to him like grim spooked-out death, no matter how much it made him hate me.

I don't know how long we stayed like that—it felt like fucking
forever
, and the only good thing was I'd ended up with my back to the maze and didn't have to watch all that nothing. Felix just laid there and hated me and waited for me to fuck up. Even when I wasn't looking right at him, I could feel it. And let me tell you, that ain't no nice feeling. And oh, yeah, it was still raining like it was going into the business full-time. I just hung on and prayed I wouldn't fuck up and get Felix killed.

And finally it was over. It was kind of like that, too—no fireworks or trumpets or nothing, just Felix went limp and shut his eyes. It was a while before I felt like I could be sure he wasn't faking, but when I let go, he just went on laying there, and I guess maybe he was crying. Hard to tell with the rain, and he wasn't making no noise about it.

I stood and looked at him for a while, and the rain finally allowed as how it had to slack off some, and he still hadn't moved. I turned around and looked at the maze, and I still couldn't tell anything had happened except a bunch of rain. I went over and messed up the pattern as best I could, yanking out a lot more grass, and when I was done you could still tell it was
something
, but I didn't think anybody'd be able to figure out it was a maze. And I was going to have to hope that was good enough.

It wasn't so much that I was expecting that to work as that I didn't know what else to try. So I just about swallowed my tongue when it
did
work. Felix got up good as gold and stood waiting for me to tell him what to do, just like normal. He wasn't meeting my eyes, but I couldn't blame him for that, and anyway that was normal, too.

I picked up our one bag, as soaking wet as everything else, so I felt like I was carrying a leaky goldfish bowl. "Okay," I said and took my best stab at where east was. "Let's go."

And he followed me like this whole freakshow thing had never happened. Except that it had, and looking back at him, head-down and dragging, I didn't think we were going to be able to forget it.

Felix

I follow Keeper.

My head is full of blackness and thunder, and I can smell the Sim all around me, the ever-present, unspoken threat that Keeper wears like an iron crown.

We are walking and walking. I look back for Joline, but I can't see her. Keeper won't let me wait for her. He keeps telling me to hurry up, to keep walking. I will do anything to keep him from touching me, and my every step is a betrayal of Joline.

I know she was there in the grass. The crying people said they would help me find her, that it would be easy once I had walked their maze. They said we could sleep together, Joline and I, sleep and not fear. And I could feel her there, waiting for me, at the center of the maze.

But there was a black shape, and it would not let me go to her. I fought it, but I could not defeat it, and I could hear Joline crying. She was lonely, as I was. We used to make up stories that we were really brother and sister, really the long-lost heirs of Cymellune. But all my pretending was lost with her, once in the smoke of the Rue Orphée and now again in the grass of Nera. I have nothing left but Keeper, who was waiting for me when the blackness had gone.

Everything is gray and heavy, and the shadows are getting thicker at the edges of my sight. I stay close to Keeper; even he is better than the monsters waiting in the shadows. Keeper can only hurt me.

But the shadows keep advancing, especially on my right side, my bad side. When I turn my head, they retreat, but I know that then they are advancing on the left, and there is only so long that I can bear that knowledge before I have to turn my head back the other way, and the shadows on my right giggle and start advancing again. Only my yellow eye can ward them off; the blue eye, the half-blind one, is no threat to them, and they know it.

Keeper's voice, like a cannon: "What is it now? Looking for work as a pendulum?"

I jerk my head front again; he is standing, hands on hips, waiting for an answer.

"The shadows," I say.

"Shadows?"