Unreal City (7 page)

“It remained in the condition it was left in by the last person who owned it,” he answered, prancing up to where I stood. There were tiny, bright colored fish swimming in the shallows and he batted at them lazily. “And it’s yours because you fed me. It’s the reward I promised.”

I shuddered from a sudden rush of lightness, as if a great weight had been ripped off my shoulders. It was too good to be true, yet here I was, standing in the middle of it. Proof before my very eyes. Even if this wasn’t really happening, I was perceiving it just as clearly, or perhaps even
more
clearly, than the real world.

A dark thought halted my reverie. “Wait, will I be here forever?” I worried aloud, and the familiar shook his head.

“This will fade, which is why it is my strong suggestion you start to take advantage of your time here sooner rather than later,” he told me with apparent boredom, then made a small noise of victory as he caught a neon orange fish in his claws and gobbled it down.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to take anything without asking?” I asked, and his stomach-churning grin widened.

“I told you, nothing here is real, but it will all
feel
real. Go on. Try it. Make something,” he encouraged and I frowned.

He could tell I hadn’t the slightest idea how to do what he’d suggested. He sighed, took up a mouthful of sand, and then leapt into the air. He floated up as if riding the breeze and whirled around to drop the sparkling grains onto my outstretched palm. “Will it, and it shall be.”

“Okay,” I said, concentrating on the sand.
I want…more petit fours.

The sand quivered and glowed, then shifted into a cyclone of light that reformed as a silver plate laden with the pastel-colored snacks. I laughed with delight, plucked one off the plate and popped it into my mouth. A symphony of flavor sang on my taste buds, unlike anything I’d ever tasted before. Even the unearthly cake that had brought me here paled in comparison. After I’d had a moment to revel in the joy of such a creation, I finished off the plate with the vigorous appetite of a puppy faced with a full bowl of food.

“And I don’t even feel full!” I exclaimed as I set the ornate silver plate down in the sand. “This is fantastic! This is incredible!” My head was buzzing, the overwhelming possibilities reducing me to a temporary state of shock.

“I told you you’d like it. Now, make more food! Make a whole
feast.
” The spirit bounced on his paws, leaping up high into the air and floating down gracefully, as if he were sinking through water and not air.

“That is an excellent idea, um—what do I call you? What’s your name?” I faltered, wondering why I’d never bother to ask the creature before this moment.

He stopped bouncing. “I have no name, or at least not one that I can tell you. You must give me one. I’m yours now, after all.”

My joy wavered. Something about the idea of
owning
this little demon brought on feelings of trepidation.

“A name? I don’t know. I’ll just call you…Felix. For now, I guess. Until I think of something better,” I said and shrugged, turning back to infinity with avarice. I lifted my hands up like a conductor at his podium, and out of the sand formed a table covered with a silk, embroidered cloth. With more flicks of my fingers, dishes divine and sumptuous materialized out of the gold dust. Apples, grapes, pears, nectarines, peaches, berries—all saturated with sun-given sweetness, luscious and almost bursting with juices—sprang into existence aside braised meats caramelized with glazes of sauce. Massive, moist turkeys surrounded with ruby-bright cranberries, troughs of potatoes, steamy with a light, garlic scent, and ribs dripping with thick sauce followed. There were hot rolls, crumbly cornbread, and soups fit for a king. Icy pitchers of juice, honeyed wines, and jugs of crisp, refreshing water joined the procession. More and more the feast built itself with every food I loved, and when I willed confections that I had never imagined or heard of, they too joined the culinary parade. This pleased me most of all—this strange world wasn’t limited by my own imagination.

I could hold back no longer. Felix and I attacked the table and every last one of the victuals, forsaking any form of manners in our frenzied hunger. We ate like hyenas upon a fresh kill, and not even for an instant did a feeling of sickness or tightness of the belly come upon me. When I had finished with the feast, I threw myself down into the sand, laughing in disbelief and contentment, with the satisfying sensation that I’d finished a moderately sized meal. Just as I grew sleepy while enjoying the tapestry of dusty colors that was the eternal sunset, Felix’s bright eyes came into my vision.

“What are you waiting for? There’s so much more you can do. Think, Sarah. Dream. Bring it all into creation,” Felix coaxed, and I sat back up. I hesitated, then decided to forge ahead. If the clock really was ticking….

I took off at a run toward the pier with the wild amusement park twirling and blinking atop its platform. I gathered speed and right as I reached the point on the sand where the waves were crashing, I took a little hop, then a leap, and I was gliding through the air. I skimmed above the waves, my heart skipping beats and a laugh ricocheting around in my throat. Felix was beside me now, and we both gained altitude, sailing next to that brilliant disc of light that was the sun, landing atop the Ferris wheel.

We rode it, marveling at all the attractions below us and the small crowd enjoying them. I understood that none of the people around us were real; not the beaming children tugging at the hands of their parents, nor the young lovers cooing to each other in the other gondolas. They were all part of the illusion of the garden; puppet shows created to stave off loneliness. We floated from each ride and carnival booth to the next: the unrestrained speed of the roller coaster, the mystery of the fortune telling tent, the shocks of the ghost house. My senses were overloaded with bobbing balloons, the smells of caramel popcorn mixed with cotton candy, and fireworks exploding above us. When we had exhausted what was there, I raised up the ocean level and flooded the park, submerging the glimmering rainbow of lights. We rose with the water level, watching the fair below us, still operational within the sea. I took one last look at it, warmth filling my heart, and then wiped it clean.

My desires unfolded one by one. My own island, complete with a three-story tree house. A million dollar shopping-spree in New York City. A stroll through an enchanted botanical dreamscape where Felix and I chased after pixies and sprites. I had always wanted to slay a dragon, too, so I brought that to reality. I couldn’t ever remember feeling so powerful and in control as when I lopped off the beast’s head while its blood dripped down my sword, drops of scarlet molasses. I decided next to go to a fancy ball where I chatted idly with Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, and Stanley Kubrick, and right in the middle of the affair the whole soiree came to a hush and I was presented an award for being a visionary photographer. As I was taking my bows and being lauded by too many famous faces to count, Felix nodded to me. We waved goodbye, then split through the ceiling, only to go sailing in a skiff across the Milky Way. Celestial insects all aglow with their own luminescence fluttered by: butterflies, ladybugs, fireflies, jeweled beetles with opal wings.

“Felix, this is…this is the most wonderful thing in the universe. I don’t ever want to leave,” I told him, the sleeves of my gossamer gown flowing in the breeze as I dragged my hand through the starry stream. It was pleasantly cool. Felix crept over and curled up in my lap.

How was I ever afraid of you?
I thought with something very much like affection in my heart, stroking his fur and scratching behind his ears. We floated there for a while, drifting blissfully on the sea of stars until I wiped it clean and created an autumn forest set aflame with the light of a sunset, the air crisp with a hint of cinnamon and smoke floating on the breeze. I asked the animals to come out and spend some time with us, and became so immersed in the grand time we were having waltzing and singing in the forest hollow I didn’t notice a strange sensation creeping up on me at first, invading my joyful world.

It was another person. I could feel them, unlike the projections of my imagination or the dancing animals and children amusement park. It was another soul.

“Felix, what’s happening? Can you—can you feel that?” I looked down in concern at the familiar, his nod reassuring me.

“You needn’t worry. It’s only someone coming into your garden for a visit. One of the others. Someone’s curious to see this garden occupied after being empty so long.” Felix turned toward the leaf-covered slope, blazing with the burnt orange and cranberry reds of the foliage.

I watched with him, until movement disturbed the hill above and a face came into view. A pair of round, honey-colored eyes blinked back at me as a boy, maybe one or two years my senior, stepped up to the crest of the hill with feet well-practiced in hiking. The bones in his bewildered face were well-defined, his dark brown hair messy. He wore a well-loved wool sweater and scratchy brown trousers. Thirty seconds passed in silence before I spoke.

“Hello,” I said, lifting my hand in salutation. He turned and ran, kicking up a shower of autumn leaves behind him.

“Wait! What’s wrong?” I yelled, trying to use my new sense of control over this world to shrink its vastness, but he’d pierced through what I sensed to be the boundaries of my garden and was gone. Confused, I bid the dancing animals—they had been consumed with festivities during the encounter—to run off into the woods and leave Felix and me. I turned down to the familiar and asked, “Who was that?”

“I think his name is Angus. He calls his familiar Aodh. I rather like that spirit, too. He’s one of the others that makes eternity bearable,” Felix said, making my brain flood with the curiosities surrounding him.

“You said there are eleven other spirits, right? And each of them has a human partner?” I asked, and Felix nodded, patient and attentive. “So where did you come from? Where did this place come from?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember that far back. It’s always been here, and so have we. I can’t remember being born any more than you can. I’ve been going to your world since the dark times, the times of fire, the times of ice. We all did. We’ve all had many names, and many faces. The times without creatures that can use words are terrible ones, full of chaos—we sit those times out and wait. Wait for refined consciousness to return to the physical world,” Felix murmured, hypnotizing my mind into visions of primordial Earth. The sun began to sink in the distance and the forest around us grew darker. The breeze kicked up and a chill I hadn’t willed there ran through it.

“And you don’t want to hurt the people who feed you, do you?”

“No, we don’t want to hurt you. We
love
you. You sustain us. You entertain us. You maintain us,” he chanted, his eyes glowing too bright.

“And the others—can I speak to them? Can I go to their gardens the way that boy came into mine?”

Felix nodded. “Of course. But you won’t be in control there. You’ve got to be careful with a few of them. Not everyone is receptive to visitors in their private world. The little one and the old woman would probably like to meet you. Stella speaks your language, and she’s here right now. I can take you to them, if you like,” Felix offered, his tail twitching.

After a moment of deliberation I nodded. I wanted to talk to another person, someone who knew what was going on and could give me an explanation I could trust. Felix was…
fantastical
, but I still didn’t know if I could believe his words.

THE FAMILIAR LED
me through the woods of my own creation, and when we reached the edge of the world that I had inherited—
or taken?
—we stepped through something like a thin membrane of palpable, invisible energy. My skin tingled as I looked around, finding that we now stood in a beautiful little meadow. It looked like something out of a fairy tale; a cottage as precious and overly florid as the ones Thomas Kinkade painted was nestled in the grass, complete with a waterwheel spinning over a stream. Behind the cozy home was a forest, the floor carpeted with flowers of many colors.

Before I could step through the knee-high grass, I heard a little cry from behind the home, and then a little girl was running toward me at full speed, her arms outstretched and a beaming smile on her lips. She was as pretty as a picture, and looked just like a porcelain doll with her rosy cheeks and blonde curls. Tiny arms curled around my leg as the child sang out in French.