“Fluorescent?” Nathan repeated. “What do you mean?”
“He’s bright, but irritating.”
Patar pointed at the floor. “The approach of interfinity caused Sarah’s Womb to expand in three directions, and the harmonic music created a new floor here, though a hole remains that leads to her infinite depths. There are two other floor levels above us; one for the dream worlds, and one at the top for my world. Since the visible realm is codependent with the invisible, if the dream worlds were to split, your extrafinity would occur. So we must complete the healing of both.”
“By playing the big violin?” Nathan hoisted Kelly a little higher, sweating now as her hot body pressed against his. “But how? We almost got killed the last time we tried.”
“You will see.” Patar waved an arm toward the void. “Come. We will ascend to the next level. Who will lead the way?”
“Are you kidding me?” Daryl said, setting a hand on her hip. “Why don’t you take the first step?”
“Because, Miss Fluorescent, I must buoy anyone who has trouble ascending. The level of dreams is the center of mass, and all are drawn to it, whether from below or from above, but not all travel there at the same rate.”
“When I walked around the ledge,” Solomon said, “I didn’t feel an upward pull.”
“You must get closer to the center. It will require a leap.”
Amber walked to the edge. “I will go first. They trust me.” She jumped out over the hole and immediately began to rise. Within seconds, she vanished into the upper darkness.
Nathan’s father and mother joined hands. “Shall we?” he asked.
“By all means.” Turning to Nathan, she leaned close to the hand that gripped Kelly’s shoulder. She breathed on his knuckles, then gazed at him lovingly. “The breath of God never fails, my son. Whether by music, by love, or by resurrection from the dead, he will restore everything to its proper place.”
After backing up a step, they jumped and lifted into the air. Nathan and Daryl did the same, with Daryl still holding the candle, the only light they had, save for Cerulean’s faint glow.
As he ascended, Nathan looked down, barely able to see over Kelly’s body. Below, Cerulean and Patar drifted upward at the same rate. The blue-haired supplicant stared straight at Nathan — poised, confident, fearless.
Nathan pulled Kelly’s face next to his. Her skin, cold and damp, smelled of burnt flesh, and her hair smelled worse. Still, her breaths, though rapid and shallow, gave him hope. He had to revive her. And he had to do it without letting the supplicants die. His only hope was to play the big violin. But how? Even though he had succeeded with the normal one, Sarah’s instrument was a completely different story. Every note caused an earthquake, and without a bow, it seemed impossible.
Daryl held out her candle, illuminating the dark barrier surrounding them. “That wall isn’t more than a few feet away. This part of Sarah’s Womb is kind of a tight squeeze.”
“I noticed. I think there are mysteries here we’ll never solve.”
Soon, the wall sloped and drew farther back. Their upward ascent slowed until they reached a point where the wall ended with rough edges at the top, as if someone had ripped away the perimeter. They stopped and hovered in place, floating next to Amber, who looked around with narrowed eyes.
Nathan followed with his own gaze. With lights from various dreams illuminating the expanse, several images took shape — a football field with stadium lights, a sunlit meadow with a girl flying a kite, and a cemetery, barely visible under a half moon.
“Very strange,” Amber said. “The three dream worlds are now in view of each other, and it is a simple matter to travel between them.”
“How?” Nathan asked. “Wouldn’t the dream people hit some kind of boundary if they tried to go around this hole? Hasn’t that always been there?”
“Yes. That barrier likely still exists, but look.” Amber pointed up. “The bridge is complete.”
Nathan lifted his head. Above, the vine Amber had stretched between the two spider trees was still there, and now another vine had been tied to the middle of that one, bending it toward a third spider tree. Who could have anchored the Earth Red dream world to the other two?
Still holding the candle, Daryl reached up and grabbed the vine with her free hand. “Get ready,” she said. “I’m going to haul us to the side.” She reached around Nathan’s shoulders, keeping the flame clear of his shirt and Kelly’s hair, and pulled toward the edge of the hole.
As soon as their feet passed over the floor, gravity took over. Nathan dropped to the ground with a thud but managed to balance Kelly and stay upright.
Daryl, too, landed heavily, groaning as she steadied herself. “If we pull this off, the three worlds had better come up with the biggest honkin’ gold medal in history.”
Standing well out of reach of the tree, Nathan looked back at the core. Like a circus acrobat, Amber swung easily to the side on her own.
Daryl held out her candle. “Pretty dark in this dream world.”
“Yeah,” Nathan said. “I want to check out the cemetery.”
“To find Felicity?” she asked.
“Right.” He looked down at Kelly. “When Kelly went with Felicity into the sandbox, she might have learned more about where she really was. I wish she were awake to give me more clues.”
Daryl shrugged. “If wishes were wardrobes, we’d all be in Narnia.”
Nathan gave her a smile. She was still doing her best to cheer him up. It helped, but Kelly’s body weighed down his spirits as well as his arms.
When Patar arrived, still floating in the center, he grasped the vine and examined the knot that fastened one to the other. “Amber, did you do this?”
Amber walked back to the edge of the hole. “Nathan and I tied two spider trees together, but someone else added the other vine.”
Rubbing a hand along the fibrous line, Patar raised his brow. “Who but a supplicant could have conceived such a brilliant plan?”
“I’ll bet I know who.” Nathan turned to his father. “Dad, I could use that help now, if you don’t mind.”
“Glad to.” Solomon grabbed the vine and swung to the ground. While he held out his arms, Nathan shifted Kelly into his grasp.
“Thanks. I hope this won’t take long.” Nathan dug into Daryl’s bag, withdrew a candle, and set the wick to her flame. “Let’s look for Felicity.”
“When I found her,” Solomon said, “she was leaning against a tombstone.”
“Same for me, but if I’m right about what’s going on here, this place might not be safe, so maybe you’d better stay with Mom.”
Still floating at the vine, Patar frowned. “Time is of the essence. Even now these vines are stretched to the limit and are ready to break. If the real worlds are in such a state, the people are surely suffering, and it will only get worse if Lucifer wakes up.”
Nathan pointed at Patar. “Just stuff it! If you wanted someone who’ll ignore the cries of a lost and frightened girl, then you got the wrong guy.” He shifted his finger to the cemetery. “I’m going out there to find Felicity, or whoever she is. If God won’t hold the cosmos together long enough for me to find her, then maybe it’s not worth holding together.” He laid a hand on Kelly’s brow. “There’s one thing I’ve learned through all this; every single person is worth more than I can imagine, and I’m not about to pass one by with the excuse that I’m too busy with a higher calling.”
Cerulean pulled on the vine and jumped to the ground. Looking back, he bowed to Patar. “Allow me to go with them. This is the Blue dream world, and I am confident that my aid will shorten the delay.”
“Very well. Amber and I will stay with the others. I concur with Nathan on one point. This place is not safe. With the breach in these walls, the danger to these Earth-dwellers is high. All living captives have likely escaped.”
Nathan walked on a path of twisted vines as he led the way past the first tombstone, checking the other side before m
oving to the next. With only the partial moon and his candle providing light, seeing proved difficult. Several oaks with low-hanging limbs and dangling gray moss cast humanlike shadows over the gravesites. As a soft breeze swayed the branches, it seemed that dark ghosts waltzed across their resting places.
Nathan cupped a hand around the flame, though it never flinched, even when a light rain began to fall.
“Shouldn’t we call her?” Daryl whispered. “I don’t think we have to worry about waking the dead.”
Nathan lifted the candle close to her bleeding face. “It’s not the dead I’m concerned about, but with Cerulean here, we should be okay.”
“I will call,” Cerulean said. “She will heed my voice.”
“What happened when you dove into that chasm?”
“She disappeared into a dream-ending cyclone, and Jack and I eventually rose back to the dream level. When Patar called me to return to help the musicians, I left Jack to continue the search.”
“Patar called you?” Daryl asked. “What is he, the head honcho in charge of supplicants?”
Cerulean seemed ready to answer, but he just shook his head. “There is no time to dwell on this topic. Come, I will lead the way.” He stepped to the front, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called out, “Felicity, my beloved, harken unto me. It is I, Cerulean.”
They followed the winding path, still checking both sides of every grave marker. Soon, a human form appeared ahead, female, but too dark to identify. Nathan caught up with Cerulean and extended his candle. “Can you tell who she is?” Nathan asked.
Cerulean stopped and called out, “Felicity, do you fear our approach?”
A weak voice replied. “I smell death.”
Nathan ran ahead and looked at her through his candle’s flame. Her hair and dress dampened by the steady rain, her walking stick clutched in a thin hand, and her eye sockets still vacant, she looked as pitiful as ever. “Felicity, listen carefully. You are the dream representation of your real self. We’re looking for that real person. Have you seen someone sleeping around here?”
Felicity said nothing. She just crossed her arms and gave him a stern look.
When Cerulean arrived, he took her hand. “You have no need to fear. If we find whom we seek, we will not leave you here alone. In fact, you may go home with us. Death will never stalk you again in these gardens of decay.”
“I did see someone,” she said, her fingers throttling her walking stick, “but the last time I trusted you, I fell. When I woke up, I was by myself again.”
“That is because you allowed fear to overwhelm you.” Cerulean lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Now you have another opportunity.”
“Why should I believe you? Your claim that I’m a dream is ridiculous.” She tapped the side of her walking stick against her head. “I know when I’m dreaming. I’m always floating in an empty place all alone.”
“Always?” Nathan asked. “Haven’t your dreams changed at all?”
She aimed her stick in his general direction. “Now that you mention it, my most recent dream was pretty strange. But the story really starts before the dream. A while back, I felt something odd with my walking stick. Someone had pulled a vine from one of the spider trees and pushed it through the wall. The next time I was awake, I decided to try the vine trick at a different tree. I managed to dig a hole in the wall and poke the vine in, but then the tree grabbed me, and I fell asleep.
“That’s when my strange dream started. I was floating in darkness, as usual, but then I saw something. Yes, saw. It was the tiniest speck of light. I floated toward it, but on the way, I passed by a vine that I could only feel. It was tight, and I could move around by pulling on it. So I pulled hard to make it spring me toward the light.”
Nathan watched her animated facial expressions. He wanted to hurry her along, but he didn’t want to risk missing an important clue.
“That worked,” she continued. “The light came through a tiny hole in a wall that had the end of a vine poking through, so I pulled on it until I had reeled out several feet. Then, I bent my knees and pushed off the wall, but I didn’t have enough slack in the vine to get all the way to the other one, so I sprang back.
“I was able to pull out a little more vine, so I tried again. This time when I pushed from the wall, I reached as far as I could. I grabbed the other vine and stretched both far enough to tie one to the other. It felt good to accomplish something, even if it was just a dream.
“I was just floating there, holding on to the vine and enjoying the fact that I finally had something to anchor me in place, when, after a while, sparkles of light rose from underneath me, red, yellow, and blue. They were beautiful. I liked watching them, but they stung when they touched me, so I pulled over to the wall and flattened myself against it. They rose into the dark sky and made tiny explosions, but it didn’t last long.
“Another kind of sparks came from below that attached to the wall and ate through it like acid. The wall tore apart, and I fell to the ground and hit my head. I could still see, but I kind of staggered around for a while, and I was so dizzy I just had to lie down. When I did, the dream ended, and I woke up back here.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Weird, huh?”
“Very weird,” Nathan said, “but if you’ll show me where you saw someone, I think I can explain it all.”
Felicity extended her walking stick and sighed. “I suppose my life can’t get any worse.” She turned and began tapping the stick on the path. “The person’s either asleep or unconscious. I felt long hair, so I think it’s a girl or a woman. She’s big enough to be an adult.”
Nathan waved for the others to follow. After about a minute, she slowed and sniffed the air. “She is close.”
“Which direction?” Nathan asked.
She pointed with her stick. “That way, but I will not go. Death is also in that direction.”
21
THE REAL FELICITY
Nathan laid a hand on Cerulean’s back. “You stay here with Daryl and Felicity. If I run into trouble, I’ll give a shout.”
“Very well. But you must hurry. We still have much work to do. Patar will not be happy.”
“Trust me, I know.” Nathan turned and stepped off the path. Now searching in the heart of the cemetery, dozens of tombstones loomed before him; some small, barely more than a foot high, and others tall and ornate, rising higher than his head. Anyone or anything could be hiding behind them, maybe even this “death” Felicity had smelled.
Again cupping his candle, Nathan stalked closer to one of the larger stones, a head-high obelisk with a marble cross on top. Rain fell loudly on the gray stone, making every spatter sound like a breaking twig or the unguarded footstep of an approaching enemy.
Something moved ahead, a shadow on the other side of the stone. Nathan crouched and skulked to the obelisk, glad now for the rain’s concealing noise. Pressing his back against the stone, he peeked around the edge. A body lay on the gravesite, curled and unmoving; it was obviously female, though darkness concealed any details. A tall figure stood near the body and held a short stick in one hand.
Nathan looked back at the path. The others had disappeared among the shadows, leaving him to handle this guy by himself. That stick didn’t look like much of a weapon. A surprise attack with a swift kick in a vulnerable spot should take him out. But was he an enemy? He couldn’t jump a guy without finding out first. And maybe he was just part of the dream. Either way, he had to act now.
With a quick lunge, he jumped from behind the stone, wheeled around to the front, and leaped for the girl’s body. Straddling her as he extended the candle, he squinted through the curtain of rain. A white-haired man stood only a foot or two in front of him, his eyes wide. In one hand he held a sonic paralyzer, and in the other, a small book.
Nathan gulped. “Tsayad!”
The paralyzer flashed on. A red light pulsed at the top, and an ear-splitting wail rocked Nathan’s brain. The stalker shouted
a string of harsh vowel sounds, but Nathan didn’t need Kelly to interpret. After being pushed into Sarah’s Womb, Tsayad had a score to settle.
Nathan jumped and landed a hard kick against Tsayad’s chest. The stalker flew backwards, and his paralyzer clanked to the ground near the body. The girl stirred. Her face toward the ground, she moaned but said nothing.
With a quick stomp, Nathan crushed the end of the sonic rod. As the noise died away, the girl continued to squirm, again moaning softly.
Tsayad climbed to his feet and let out a shrill whistle. Two more figures emerged from the shadows, each one holding a paralyzer.
The rods flashed on, and twin squeals ripped through the air. Nathan dropped his candle and covered his ears. Just as he took in a breath to yell for help, another loud noise erupted from behind him, a deep bass that sounded more like a foghorn than a voice.
Cerulean strode their way, his mouth open in song. The notes varied, but they stayed deep, rich, and resonant. They seemed to muffle the squeals, making them tolerable.
A stiff breeze swirled. One of the smaller tombstones lifted from the ground, followed by another. Weeds and turf flew into the growing cyclone, along with several trees. The three stalkers stood with their legs set wide, trembling as they braced against the storm. Although they obviously feared Cerulean, two held their sonic rods aloft as if daring anyone to come nearer. The supplicant had canceled the sound, but one touch from a rod would still carry a paralyzing jolt.
Daryl ran to Nathan’s side, her hair whipping as she shouted, “Felicity’s waking up! I mean, the real Felicity.”
“I know!” Nathan shouted back. “Where’s the dream version?”
“Right next to me!” Daryl dug both heels into the ground and hung on to Felicity. The wind picked the girl off the ground and stretched her out horizontally, like a banner flapping in the wind. The ferocious pull dragged both her and Daryl toward the awakening body.
“Let her go!” Nathan yelled. “She needs to wake up!”
“If you say so!” Daryl released Felicity’s hand. With her vacant sockets wide open and her mouth gaping in a silent scream, she flew into the wind. She made a wide circle in the cyclonic flow, then vaporized into a stream of gray mist and splashed over the body.