Penult (37 page)

***

I awoke in the dark and drowsed,
basking in the night sounds. Wind whistling through the ruins.
Giant insects croaking and singing on the lower terrace, the
distance muting them, disguising their size.

For hours I lay back on the mats,
drifting in and out of wakefulness. The Singularity kept its
distance, as if it knew it had saturated my capacity for new
information.

Something large thumped hard onto my
roof. A shower of loose slate cascaded across my window. A shadowy
figure leaped down onto my little patio, intruding into my quarters
without a knock or greeting. Urszula reached down, grabbed my ankle
and gave it a shake.

“
We go,” she
said.

“
Now? Where?”

“
To the bogs. It is time
for you for have your own wings.”

“
But I already got
wings.”

“
Real wings,” said Urszula.
“It is time for you for have dragonfly.”

“
You’re giving me a
bug?”

“
Yaqob is making gift of
one nymph for you. It is special honor. We have not so many
dragonflies these days. The war has been hard.”

“
Holy cow. But … I don’t
know how to take care of those things.”

“
They take care of self. No
worries. You just need for train it to listen. To
behave.”

“
Sheesh. I never really had
a pet, other than a hamster. Mom wouldn’t let us have a
dog.”

“
This is no dog. This is
dragonfly. You come. We go now. We eat breakfast at the bog. She
sniffed at me and wrinkled her nose. You can wash there too. Come.
We ride together. Lalibela waiting on roof.”

Chapter 37: The
Bog

I wore the same sweaty clothes I had
on for the last two days. I suppose I should have woven myself a
new set of clothes at some point and let the stinky ones revert
back to roots. That was way easier than trying to wash
them.

The weird gummy bandage that Urszula
had stuck on me had crusted and darkened so it looked like a scab.
It smelled funny, too—sour and rank like spoiled salami. I was
tempted to peel it off but it was stuck tight to my skin. At least
it seemed to wearing away on its own.

“
I hope you are not fading
soon?” said Urszula, those intense eyes of hers boring in on
me.

“
Why?”

“
Because you don’t want to
fade while flying in air. When you come back. There is no
dragonfly.”

“
Aren’t you a Hemisoul too,
these days?”

“
Yes. But I can feel when I
am about to leave.”

“
I’ll let you know,” I
said. “Usually, I get this tingling.”

Urszula locked her fingers together
and gave me a boost up onto the roof where Lalibela stood preening
her antennae. The remains of a half-eaten Cherub lay in a heap
before her.

“
Oh my God! You’re letting
her eat one? What the fuck?”

“
Why not?” said Urszula,
nonchalantly.

“
This is … was … a person,
Urszula. What kind of habits are you teaching your bug?”

“
She was hungry. It would
be cruel now to take it away from her.”

“
Cruel.”

Urszula’s eyes hardened.

“
Do not cry for this one.
He has no soul. He is no longer human. Only meat, shape like
man.”

I held my tongue and took my usual
spot in front of Urszula on the saddle. Before I could even settle
in and grab on Lalibela took off, soaring away with the headless
corpse of the Cherub gripped in her claws. Bits of flesh flew off
as she chomped away. It was ghastly.

We flew away from the basin this time,
rising over low but jagged spires that rose up abruptly behind the
plateau that held the city, providing an effective natural bulwark.
Behind them stretched an area of badlands with of deeply dissected
gorges separated by hogback ridges. This rumpled territory ended
abruptly at a broad expanse of flat desert.

Distant wings patrolled the badlands.
I couldn’t tell if they were Seraphs or our own folks. I hadn’t
seen Tyler or Kitt since the day we had arrived.

When we reached the desert, Lalibela
dove down to the flats, leveling off just above the tallest shrubs.
The close proximity of all those boulders and thorny shrubs
exaggerated our rate of speed. I clung tight to the
saddle.

The dryness of the landscape made me
wonder where we would find a bog deep enough to harbor giant
dragonfly nymphs. But this was a land of extremes. The desert,
stuck in a rain shadow, gave way to mountains and hills clothed in
mist and cloud forest.

Lalibela soared over the range,
speckled with gleaming tarns and quicksilver springs. Breaks in the
cloud revealed a massive body of water in the distance. Could that
be an ocean?

A range of mountains with blunt and
knobby peaks surrounded a basin similar to the one near New Axum,
except this one collected the runoff with no outlet. The terrain
was verdant and moist, with very little open water but many swamps
ringed with forests of giant reeds.

Lalibela circled down to a lonely
cluster of habitations build atop floating mats of vegetation—a
tiny village of huts with roofs thatched with bundled ferns and
walls of lashed-together reeds as thick as bamboo.

She settled down on a huge, almost
perfectly round lily pad large enough to land a helicopter. The
corrugated rim came up to her first set of knees. I hopped down to
a waxy green surface that yielded underfoot like an extra stiff
water bed.

Honeybees buzzed among the water lily
blossoms. Water striders as big as deer skimmed the water on
hydrophobic feet. Large, shadowy things beneath the water rippled
the surface as they swam.

People streamed out of their huts to
greet us. All had the greyish skin of Dusters typical of all
escapees from the Deeps. For some reason I had assumed that all
Dusters lived on top of mesas. I had guessed wrong.

“
This is Dilmun,” said
Urszula. “The Old Ones settle here first. Back when Penult does not
know or does not care who shares the surface with them.”

A woman made her way over to us,
hopping from pad to pad, squinting and gaping at Urszula. Her
expression grew only more puzzled as she joined us on the pad. She
shook her head, rattling the shells and seed pods that adorned her
braids.

“
Urszula? Is that
you?”

She reached and touched Urszula’s
tanned and rosy face.

“
Yes Dahlia. You know it
is,” said Urszula, looking annoyed.

“
Hah! What happened?” The
woman grinned broadly, exposing teeth as grey as her skin and
eyes.

“
This man happened, that’s
what. This is the one maybe you hear about.”

“
Ahah! The James.” The
woman turned and called back to some other curious residents who
were gathering on the adjacent mats. She spoke the tongue of the
Deeps, a language that sounded unlike any I had ever heard on
Earth.

“
Sorry,” I said, softly and
somewhat passively aggressive.

“
Sorry for what?” said
Urszula. “For giving me life?”

“
Well, yeah. I mean, if it
brings you trouble. I recall you weren’t so thrilled about it when
it happened.”

“
Shut up. I was stupid. You
bring me gift. I should have appreciate.

“
Really? Do you really feel
that way? I mean … you’re here all the time it seems. You never
fade. Things can’t be so great back—”

“
Things are fine! And I do
go back sometime. When I do, I treasure my time there … at home.
Unlike some. Unlike … your woman.”

I sighed with some annoyance. “Listen,
Karla had a hard life. I can’t blame her for wanting—”

“
You think my life is not
difficult? I have no house, no family. Yet, it is a treasure what
you give me. I have no regret. None. So shut up!”

Her eyes demanded mine. Tears bulged
but refused to drip. She leaned over and gave me a quick
kiss.

“
Where is Viktor?” Urszula
asked the woman and the onlookers who continued to
gather.

“
He comes,” said a
man.

Across the bog, another man was
bounding from mat to mat making his way around one of the few open
areas of water to reach us. He wore a wide-brimmed hat of ragged
straw that he had to clasp to his head with one hand as he
ran.

When he reached out pad he pulled up
in front of Urszula and beamed, all eager and excited. His grey
complexion could not disguise his youth. He gave Urszula an awkward
but gentle hug.

“
Viktor, this one needs a
mount,” said Urszula.

“
I have two nymphs ready to
molt. One male and one female.”

“
Give him the boy,” she
said. “Easier to handle.”

He threw off his hat, peeled off a
shirt and dove into the water disappearing beneath the mats. He
bobbed back up a minute later with a thick rope, slimy with algae,
in his teeth. He tossed the line to me. I caught it
reflexively.

“
What’s this
for?”

“
Give it a tug,” said
Urszula.

I yanked the rope and whatever was at
the other end of it yanked it back out of my hands.

Urszula lurched after it but Viktor
held up both palms as the loose end slithered back into the
bog.

“
It is okay. The nymph will
come. It is ready. It has been waiting.”

The water began to churn. Two dripping
sickle-sized claws emerged, latching onto the edge of the giant
lily pad. Urszula clapped and Lalibela flew off, leaving behind the
bloody thigh bone of a Cherub.

The creature that emerged had a face
like a frog’s but with a hard shell and bulging, compound, wide-set
eyes. A pair of sharp and stubby antennae projected forward like
Triceratops horns. Multiple jointed appendages adorned its
mouthparts. I backed away as it clambered onto the pad, sending
tremors through the thick leaf.

It stood there, abdomen pulsing,
hissing from holes in its side. Viktor went up to it and stroked
its back, murmuring something softly.

He back turned to us. “This one we
have been holding back. The change will go fast. Be ready to fly
with him as soon as he is able. Penult has been raiding us. They
try to kill them all before they can molt.

“
Fly?” I said, staring at
the stubby, flattened fins on the creature’s back where the wings
should be. “How is this thing gonna fly?”

“
Prepare to be surprised,”
said Urszula, sitting down cross-legged on the lily pad.

The creature latched onto a reed stalk
and began to climb. There was a ripping sound as the shell of the
nymph burst apart. A second head appeared behind the original.
Something hideous pushed out of the shell, arching backwards,
pulsing. It just hung there, with its shriveled, deformed wings
dangling and I thought for sure something had gone wrong. This
creature had none of the elegance of Lalibela.

After a time, it reached out its claws
and grasped its own shell, extracting the rest of itself from the
nymphal abdomen. It clambered off beside its former exoskeleton.
Now the wing buds began to pulse and expand slowly.

Someone shouted and pointed into the
sky. A Seraph had appeared over the bog. On the horizon several
dark objects were winging over the hills. A flight of falcons were
bearing down on us.

“
Shit!” said Urszula,
hopping to her feet. She popped a device into her mouth that had
been dangling from a cord around her neck. I had thought it was
just some strange decorative pendant, but it made a loud clicking
sound as she blew.

Lalibela came zooming over the reed
forest, dropping down to the water’s surface, stopping abruptly but
delicately on the rim of the pad.

Urszula yanked a sword—my sword?—from
a sheath in her saddle and tossed to me. I mishandled it and the
point went down into the leaf, piercing it and springing a
leak.

“
You protect him! He needs
more time. And he cannot go back into water.”

She hopped on Lalibela’s saddle and
buzzed off, joining a flight of three other dragonfly riders who
were soaring off to intercept the falcons.

Chapter 38: Dive
Bombed

I stood on that giant lily pad like a
jack-lighted deer, gawking as the falcons peeled to engage the
dragonfly riders coming at them from both sides. But behind the
falcons came three condors, heavily laden and skimming the
hilltops.

My wits returned and I sidled over to
the newborn dragonfly with my sword. Its wings were still crumped,
but I could see fluid pumping through the translucent veins. It
hissed and backed away as I approached, lashing out with its
razor-clawed forelegs. Protect it? Who was going to protect me from
it?

I got as close as I could risk and
stood facing the condors, still uncomfortable at the prospect of
having my back turned to that hungry and quite possibly hungry
beast. I couldn’t shed the image of Lalibela munching on that
Cherub.