Penult (53 page)

“
Looks like will be a one
way mission,” said Ubaldo. “No?”

No one said anything for the longest
moment. We yielded the night to the symphony of waves, crickets and
snores.

“
You … okay with that?”
said Olivier.

“
I am at peace,” said
Ubaldo. “If I must return to the Deeps. So be it. At least it is a
place I know. Some things … I miss.”

“
Really? Like what?” said
Olivier.

“
To exist there requires no
care,” said Ubaldo. “No fuss. No pain. Never hungry. Never tired.
Never cold.”

“
Not me. I don’t miss any
of that crap,” said Olivier. “That cold was damned intense. Sure,
we could tune it out, but I was always aware of it.”

I remembered the cold acutely. It was
a marvel that a body could remain flexible in such frigid
conditions. It was almost as if souls in the deeps inhabited a
different kind of matter, halfway between human and spirit. I took
a deep breath, glorying in the cool, salt air seasoned with a blend
of resinous, herbal overtones suggestive of seaweed, juniper and
sage.

“
You know,” I said. “Here …
I feel alive. It’s really not much different … here … from
life.”

Again my companions fell silent, the
pause coinciding with yet another disconcertingly long gap of
interrupted breathing from Yaqob.

“
Good to know,” said
Olivier, finally. “It’s been a while for both Baldo and me. One
tends to forget what life was really like. All the more reason to
keep on fighting for this place, I suppose. I doubt there’s any
other realm as close to life as the Liminality.”

“
True,” I said, though my
thoughts had snagged on Ubaldo’s suggestion that none of us raiders
heading to Penult would likely ever return intact. That disturbed
and agitated me greatly. I pined for Stromness, a place I had
visited for less than a day.

***

Normally terse and stoic, Ubaldo
turned quite chatty fellow once he got going on something he cared
about. That topic turned out to be futbol. A Hemisoul in New Axum
had filled him in on the results of the most recent World Cup and
so he went on and on about it, lamenting the poor performance of
his beloved Azzurri and marveling at the shocking defeat of Brazil
by the Germans.

“
How long have you been
dead?” said Olivier.

“
Fifteen years,” said
Ubaldo. “I didn’t make the grades for university. I stepped in
front of a train.”

“
That’s a pretty dumb
reason to off yourself.”

“
Yes, well. Too late now.
Yes?”

Olivier somehow managed to maneuver
the discussion to hockey and how, in sheer skill and entertainment
value, it was a superior sport to football. I could see he was just
trolling Ubaldo, and he was effective in getting our Duster friend
extremely agitated.

I couldn’t get my head clear with all
their chatter so I dragged myself over to a quieter place behind
the shrubs, but close enough that I could still hear them chatter
over Yaqob’s snoring, it was much less obtrusive.

I crawled under a bush, tore off some
branches and scraped together some leaf litter to make a sorry bed.
I hoped to Heaven that I faded out of this place before the
morning.

But sleep wouldn’t come. I was doomed
to lay and listen to the wind and the waves, the drone of the
crickets.

The Liminality wasn’t a bad world. It
had its charms. The relative ease at which spell craft could be
conjured here increased its possibilities. Now that I knew that
Weaving was possible in life as well, that was no longer as strong
a selling point. Still, I could imagine myself settling here when
life no longer was an option.

The wall of bushes separating me from
the little glade rustled. I heard footsteps in the sand.

“
James?” A whisper. It was
Karla.

I kept silent.

“
Are you here?
James?”

I lay still, wondering if I should
answer.

“
James?”

I couldn’t help myself. “Who told you
where to find me?”

“
Olivier.”

A foot scuffed sand against my cheek.
A twig crunched next to my ear. Soft fingers reached down and
brushed the hair from my brow.

“
Oh, there you are. You
have made a little nest, I see.”

“
Karla, I don’t think you
should—”

She slipped down onto my nest beside
me and snaked an arm over my chest, pulling herself tight against
my side. I turned on my side, keeping my back to her, but she
wouldn’t let go of me.

“
This is awkward,” I
said.

“
Awkward? Stop being a
baby. I’m here to make up with you.”

“
That’s not
possible.”

“
Oh stop. You act like I
killed your puppy.”

“
You forced me to come back
here.”

“
Is that so
bad?”

“
It’s dangerous here. There
was no need—”

“
Inverness is dangerous
too. And so is Glasgow. And in this place, we are trying to make
less dangerous again.”

“
What was wrong with
Brynmawr?”

“
Brynmawr! Give me a break.
That is your idea of paradise?”

“
We had a bottomless credit
card. We could have gone and lived anywhere in the world. New
Zealand. Patagonia. Tokyo. The Galapagos. Anywhere.”

“
But eventually we all die
and then what? Become slaves of Penult? You would be happy with
this? You see what they do to their Cherub. And most of the souls
in Penult are slaves. They are Cherubim. Only the elite get to be
Hashmallim, never mind Seraphim. You say you didn’t like Frelsi …
but this place is much worse than Frelsi.”

“
How do you know we would
even end up in Penult?”

“
Oh? Then where? Heaven?
Hell? The Deeps? Are you satisfied with someone else deciding for
you or would you rather choose the place you will spend the rest of
eternity?”

“
First things first. What
about living life?”

“
Life is just a
flash.”

“
Maybe so, but we only get
one chance at it. Or … two … in some cases. Not that you deserved
it. I bring you back and you turn around and can’t wait to throw it
all away.”

“
I was scared. I did not
want to lose this place. I could not live knowing it was in peril.
I just wanted to save the Liminality … for us. But only if you
still want there to be an ‘us.’ Do you?”

I lay still, her arm a dead weight
over my torso.

“
Well, do you? Do you still
… love me? Do you?”

When I didn’t respond, she retracted
her arm abruptly. And with the loss of her touch, I felt myself
slipping over a brink into a dark and empty void. Desperate, I
panicked, squirmed around and flailed out my arm. My hand caught
her wrist and clasped it tight. I pulled her close.

Chapter 57: The Scouts
Return

Desperately and without words, Karla
and I made love in my nest of twigs and leaves. Engulfed in
scents—turpentine, salt spray, the musk of unwashed skin—I lost all
sense of self. We may as well have been wafting through the
Singularity, our souls all smudged together, blending like
smoke.

Afterwards we lay side by side, my
hoodie draped over our bare and dewy skin. A cool breeze lapped at
my bare side. Karla nuzzled my neck with her nose and made me
shiver.

This was everything I had wished for
and more, yet a weird residue of disappointment and relief
lingered. I never should have given in so easily. How would she
ever take me seriously going forward?

But what was done was done. I stared
up at the strangely faded stars that wandered the skies of this
world. I wondered if they were mere decoration—some sham created
for the viewing pleasure of spirits of some higher station. But
what if those were real worlds revolving up there, other
after-realms for humans or whatever alternative intelligences might
exist in this universe? Maybe one of those points of light was
Heaven itself. Coming to the Liminality had revealed a few
mysteries, only to hint at the existence of a thousand
more.

I had no idea what to do about me and
Karla, how we moved on from this reconciliation, if that’s what it
was. What had just happened between us had come natural, but it
didn’t mean we were back together.

Things were different now between us.
Her leaving had left a taint on our relationship. Our connection
would never be as simple and pure as our first days together in
Root. It was harder for me now to imagine a future that involved
the both of us.

“
There. You happy now?” she
asked, as if she were reading my mind. I wasn’t ready to admit to
her what I was really thinking.

“
Sure.” The word slipped
from my lips like a sigh. It was a white lie.

“
Don’t you fade on me
again. We have things left to do. I hope we are not doing this too
soon.”

“
What about you? Are you
happy?”

She paused.

“
It takes more than a romp
in the sand to improve my mood.”

“
Romp? Is that all this was
to you?”

“
Shush! I am just saying. I
am joking. You should know better. Happy is not my
thing.”

A blast of wind shook the trees and
swirled the bushes. Sand devils danced. Karla snuggled closer. I
let my arm slip over her, but it still felt strange holding her, as
if she wasn’t really here, but just some figment of a
daydream.

“
Do you have any idea what
we’re getting into, going to Penult?”

“
No,” she said. “But I am
not worried. Not if we have you with us.”

I sighed. “People expect too much of
me sometimes.”

“
All I expect is for you to
try. Amazing things happen when you do. I have seen them. In every
realm.”

“
Sometimes … I
fail.”

“
We all fail. You are only
human. You do what you can. That’s all you can do. All we can
expect.”

“
What if I do nothing? What
if I don’t go to Penult. Would you stop having anything to do with
me?”

“
Don’t play games with me,”
said Karla. “I know you are committed. You have eyes. You have seen
what Penult is doing. I have faith you will do the right
thing.”

“
And if I do, you will come
back … for good? Stay with me on the other side? No matter
what?”

“
Maybe. That is possible.
Is that what you wish?”

I stared at the stars. “I’m not sure
anymore.”

“
We fix things here. Make
them stop. Maybe then there can be room for some life. We do this
first and then we see. Yes?”

I took a deep breath and sighed.
“Okay.” I closed my eyes and shut out the stars.

***

The early morning rays sent the
insects preening and sunning themselves high on their perches. A
flight of bees came buzzing in to share their nectar with
us.

The word shuttled swiftly through the
camp. Yaqob had given his assent. We had waited long enough for the
scouts. We would make the crossing without them.

A work party went off to a spring at
the base of a hillock to refill all our flasks and skins with cool,
fresh water. Other volunteers made the rounds to saddle their
mounts, unpacking various foul smelling slurries and pastes that
the Dusters had tucked away in each saddlebag—supplements to boost
their energy for the long crossing.

Karla pecked my cheek and went off to
attend to her robber fly. It came zipping down out of the canopy
like a faithful dog when she called it. I had to wander the forest
a good twenty minutes before I located Tigger high atop a fig tree.
He had my spare wings strapped to his side, but my saddle remained
on the ground, stacked against a tree with several
others.

I tried coaxing him down with a sheet
of pemmican I peeled out of a saddle bag. No matter how much I
shrieked and whistled and waved the leathery flap at him, he
ignored me, preferring instead to gorge on the turkey-sized aphids
crowding the tender, outer branches. I tore off a chunk of pemmican
to try myself. It looked much better than it tasted. Sour and
putrid, like dried-up vomit, I had to spit it out.

A damselfly with indigo wings and a
purple metallic fuselage came skimming over the treetops bearing a
lone rider. It was coming from the wrong direction to be one of the
scouts. I recognized the rider. It was the young man from the
bog—the nymph whisperer who had summoned Tigger from the
depths.

Olivier came dragging his saddle. “Who
the fuck is this?”

Viktor landed damselfly in the glade
and dismounted.

“
Hello! Am I too late to
volunteer?”

“
Never,” said Yaqob, who
came strolling out of the shrubs, his chest and arms bristling with
freshly applied armored scales. “You are welcome.”