A skinny guy in a muscle shirt was leaning in a doorway looking at me funny. Never mind that I was probably funny looking. I remembered Karla’s warning and picked up my pace.
Losing a tail in Rome seemed easy with the crowds and narrow, twining alleyways, meeting and diverging at odd angles. By the time I reached the Spanish Steps I felt pretty sure I was alone. Then it was simply a matter of making my way towards the river and across to the Vatican.
***
Early on in my jail term, lying in my cell, still coming to grips with my incarceration, frustrated over my inability to just get up and go for a walk any time I wanted, the roots came hunting for me. Later on, as my release date approached, these visitations would cease, but a few weeks into my internment, they still came and took me to the Liminality with some regularity. At that point, I was still able to wallow deep in the pit of self-pity.
My mood shifted the instant I sensed the sun-warmed and resinous breeze that wafted off the scrubby foothills embracing my favorite hollow. Karla and I had a standing agreement that this would be our meeting place. But I had to see her since entering prison. My expectations were high.
The shore of the pond had receded greatly since the rains had stopped, exposing again the mud flats and meadows. My old sword stood gleaming and undisturbed right where I had stuck it in the mud several visitations past. With peace at hand, I hadn’t needed to touch it.
The waterfall that spilled from the hanging valley had dwindled to a tiny fraction of the torrent it had been during the peak of the rains, but remained strong enough to create a cloud of mist that refracted fleeting fragments of rainbow.
My willow remained a willow tree swaying in the wind just like the real thing. It had even grown a bit. I would have expected for it to have long ago degenerated back to the roots it was created from.
After what must have been hours of dawdling, it became clear that I would not be seeing Karla this time around. I decided to head out to the settlements on the pitted plains to visit with whatever friends I could conjure. It would have been a shame to fade back to my prison cell without seeing anyone.
I considered bringing my sword, but why would I need it? I left it stuck in the mud like some battlefield grave marker for a fallen warrior.
Peace had come to the Liminality. The Frelsians no longer patrolled the plains with their modified Reapers. They pretty much kept to their massif now that the Dusters have bolstered their numbers with the influx of new immigrants from the Deeps.
This rebalancing of power is what kept things peaceful. It also helped that Luther had somehow managed to make friends on both sides. He was a regular diplomat, arranging joint meetings between with Zhang, the new leader of Frelsi, and Yaqob, the closest thing to chieftain of the more anarchic and free-spirited Dusters. Luther mediated disputes, negotiated trades and even arranged symposia for the sharing of weaving-related skills and spell craft. He became the glue of the surface world.
The Old Ones we had awakened remained awake for the most part, although a steady trickle of them was gradually returning to the long sleep. They were a fixture in the populations roamed freely among the mesas, the plains and the massif, observing all that passed but generally keeping their thoughts to themselves. They would commune in the most random or places—atop dunes in the great outwash plain, in the meadows that graced the slopes of the massif.
Luther had arranged for free passage to Victoria and other recruiters from Frelsi to go into the pits into Root to free any willing new souls from their pods. Those who liked a little more structure in their existence generally went to Frelsi. The more independent and creative types joined Luther in the Burg. This steady flow of Hemisouls sustained the growth and population of surface dwellers to grow and allowed its burgeoning cities to thrive.
The Dusters had expanded from their cramped mesa tops to recolonize an ancient sister city of Frelsi that they called New Axum. I knew the place from my time there alone when I had awakened Mr. O. The location at the head of the big valley was stunning as Machu Picchu. It was nice to know that those beautiful ruins were being spruced up.
A giant mantid preened itself atop one of the bluffs that flanked my hollow. As it had no rider, it was probably out and about hunting for prey. It was comforting to know that I was not on the menu.
The Burg came into view well before I had passed the bluffs. With its many spires and multi-hued pastels kind of reminded of the Magic Kingdom. Luther’s aesthetic sensibilities would have made Walt Disney proud.
An amazing amount sprawl had sprouted around its outskirts, radiating outward like the points of a star along cobbled avenues. Word of the surface world had spread fast to all of the rebel communities down below, prompting a mass exodus. Even many who had been committed to the pods had been convinced that an existence beyond the tunnels was worth lingering in misery in the ‘real’ world.
Bern and Lille’s little complex of cabins and sheds had been overtaken by one of these rays of sprawl, and they had been joined by a number of like-minded couples and singles to create a sort of satellite village for those who wanted a slower place and less craziness. Things could get a little ridiculous in the Burg with Luther in charge.
I found them out on their porch, Bern seated on a rocker with Lille standing behind him, adjusting his hair. She used no scissors. She did it all with twirls and swipes of her fingers through the air, never touching. Filling in thin patches, lengthening bits here and there, making entire swaths fall away with a swoop of her palm.
Bern started to rise when he spotted me and instantly ruined the symmetry of his hairdo.
“Well, well. Look who’s here,” said Bern. “My fellow convicted criminal.”
“Sit back down!” said Lille. “You don’t move until I say so. I’m tired of you looking like a tramp.”
“Sorry James,” said Bern. “She’s been hounding me for weeks to get this done.”
“Look like you could use a bit of a trim yourself, James.”
“Thanks. But I’ll pass.”
“So how’s the old incarceration going?”
“Fine,” I said, leaning against a post.
“Fine? Is that all you can say?”
“I mean … it’s boring. But other than that….”
“Boring is good,” said Bern. “Boring is what you want, because the alternative—“
“It’s not that kind of prison,” I said.
“A prison is a prison, is it not?”
“Well, no. This one’s mostly non-violent offenders. It’s clean. The guards are nice. Lots of outside time. Big fields. And the food’s not quite as horrible as I was expecting.”
“What? Sounds more like a resort,” said Bern.
“There is nothing wrong with putting the best light on a bad situation,” said Lille, who unbeknownst to Bern was experimenting with the hue of his hair, altering its color of his hair in streaks and blotches. She held her finger to her lips for me to keep mum.
She had apparently been working on more than his hair. He looked years younger. The creases beside his nose had been greatly reduced and the laugh lines in the corner of his eyes were much more subtle. She had picked up some flesh weaving skills during her time in Frelsi.
“Have you guys seen Karla?”
“She was here only a couple days ago,” said Bern. “Asking pretty much the same thing about you.”
“Dang! I wish there was some way we could coordinate our visits.”
“Just … set a time,” said Lille. “Synchronize.”
“Yeah, but … I don’t have as much control over transitions as her. She seems to be able to come over anytime she feels like it. Me, I’ve got to be in the right mood. If only there was a way I could let her know I was here right now. She could come meet me.”
“Lille and I never have to worry about that,” said Bern. “We’re both here more often than not these days.”
“You’re not … free … Lille? I thought—”
“My ex
ecution was botched. And then your little raid forced us to evacuate glaciers. So no … I am not yet a Freesoul. I’m still stuck in that horrible nursing home.”
“Sorry to hear. I … I wasn’t sure.”
“No worries. I’m stable for now. But if you ever think you might over to Surrey. Let me know. I’m still looking for someone to pull my plug.”
“Not any time soon,” I said. “I was deported.”
“Oh?”
“Working without a permit.”
“Oh, well that’s a shame. I’m still working on getting Bern to join me on a trip to the mountains. The old sod doesn’t seem to have much of a death wish for someone who is supposed to be suicidal.”
“Don’t ruin my illusions dear, or I just might fade.”
“You? Fade? You’re as close to a Freesoul as a living man can be.”
“Prison … a real prison … has its charms,” said Bern, whose suddenly thick and lush mop made his head look top-heavy. Lille had overdone it a mite.
“Will you stay for dinner?” said Lille.
“Um … thanks, but no. I should get back to the hollow in case Karla shows up.”
“By all means, bring her by if she does. I can whip up a nice shepherd’s pie in moments.”
Bern wiggled his eyebrows. “It’s well worth it, boy. Even if Karla doesn’t show. Lille has the textures down to a t. Chewy beef. Crunchy carrots.”
“Will do. Nice seeing you all.”
***
I wandered back to the hollow avoiding the bustle of Luther’s metropolis, though I couldn’t help crossing some of the spokes. He had actually cobbled some of his avenues with yellow bricks.
Despite its proximity, few from the Burg seemed to visit my hollow, and that was perfectly fine with me. The footpath through the scrub was barely discernible. Residents of the Burg didn’t seem to share my taste for nature and solitude.
The hanging valley disgorged only a trickle compared to the torrent and flood that had filled the gorge while Karla was still stuck in the Deeps. The rainy season in this place was mercifully brief.
I found no messages scratched in the mudflat as Karla was wont to do whenever she came by and found me absent. I felt oddly jealous of her absence. Was she having too good a time on the other side?
I knew she was traveling, but she never shared her location with me until she was ready to leave a place. Her paranoia over being followed was just then beginning to intensify. She had been starting to notice the same person or persons loitering in her vicinity in disparate places.
I walked over to the willow where I had once buried the version of Karla who had been murdered with Fellstraw. I wondered if her body remained where I had placed it or if her return from the Deeps had eradicated it out of existence. But I was not about to dig her up.
A flurry of wings announced the arrival of a mantid, and not just any mantid. I recognized the patches on his hind wings. I couldn’t see the rider from below, but this was clearly Seraf, Urszula’s trusty war bug. Only recently did I realize that his name was a mocking dig against the Seraphim who persecuted souls who dared not chase the Horus in the Deeps.
Urszula leapt off Seraf’s back before she had even landed in the gravel, charged into me, wrestled me down and straddled me, pinning me down and holding an obsidian blade to my throat.
“What the fuck?”
She was grinning as she pricked me with her knife. That girl had a funny way of showing affection.
“And what are you doing here? I thought you said you were never coming back. Why aren’t you with your woman?”
“We … uh … kinda had a hitch in our plans. Karla got deported. I went to jail.”
“You are a bad boy? They jail you for murder? Because we kill the assassin? The cartel?”
“No. It was for something I did long before that.”
“You really are a bad boy.”
“What about you?” I said. “What are you doing here? I thought you liked being alive.”
“I do … but I find my way here still. The connection is too strong … the portal too weak to resist my wants.”
“Did you miss your friends?”
“Well … yes. And there are new people I know from the Deeps. And you bring them here. I thought … I would never see them again.”
“Well, can you … uh … please get off of me?”
A flight of nine mounted dragonflies buzzed over us, heading for the plains.
“Jeez! What are they up to, I wonder?”
Urszula rolled off and sheathed her blade. She sat cross-legged in the dirt, studying me.
“Just scouting. There is some suspicious activity across the plains, down by the shore. They are going to investigate.”
“What kind of … suspicious activity?”
“Ships,” said Urszula. “Yaqob is thinking … maybe the Frelsians now have a navy.”
“Why would they need a navy?”
“We don’t know. We are not even sure it is Frelsians.”
“Who else would it be?”
She got up and helped me to my feet. “We don’t know.” Her face went sour.
“What’s wrong?”
“You are leaving me already. And I wanted you to fly with me to see the new city.”
“New city?”
But I was already tumbling. I had awakened back in Coleman Medium. Some guy was singing at the top of his lungs and someone else yelling even louder for him to shut up. The noise echoed down the cell block.
*****
Chapter 4: Together
I honored Karla’s request to make sure I wasn’t followed by walking a route through downtown Rome so circuitous and illogical that only a blood hound could have tracked me to the Vatican. I wasn’t convinced that the threat she perceived was real, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Who could be following her? Her wicked father? Sergei’s avengers? Agents of the supernatural? All were possibilities, but it was just as likely that her paranoia had no basis in fact.
All I knew was that I ached to see her after all these months apart and this ache was a physical, tangible thing. It was probably impossible for the real Karla to live up to the version I maintained in my memory-scape, but I knew I would be satisfied with her in any form.
We had such a weird and tenuous relationship. The actual number of hours we had spent together in the living world probably totaled less than a week. Yet it felt like we had spent years together. At least every minute together in the Liminality was quality time, always intensely engaged, never knowing who would fade first or when.
So many things had contrived to keep us apart, not the least of them, her death. I wondered sometimes if she felt obligated to me only because I had managed to reincarnate her. Did she love me as much as I loved her? Why was she always running away?
But now, I was striding full bore down one of the widest avenues in Rome, heading for a rendezvous with the only girl I cared about in all of existence. I was a sweaty, thumping mess by the time I reached St. Peter’s Square.
I crossed over to a passage beneath some tall columns separating the square from some adjoining neighborhoods, hoping I had guessed right about this being her special place. I had texted her earlier that I was on my way and on foot, but she hadn’t responded. Not that I should have been surprised. She didn’t own her own phone and only rarely borrowed her cousin’s.
When I reached what I assumed to be our designated rendezvous point—a wooden bench beside yet another marble fountain—she wasn’t there. Some guy in a blue uniform sat munching some stuff wrapped in pink paper. Behind me, a gaudily dressed Swiss guard stood by the back entrance of a building.
I checked my phone again, just in case. If ever there was a time for her to borrow her cousin’s phone, this was it. But I had missed no calls or texts.
My stomach felt like a couple squirrels were wrestling inside. A cloak of dread began to spread over me. My heart kicked up the beat. A panic attack wa
s looming. I could almost sense the roots reaching out from me from whatever unseen, parallel dimension they inhabited.
A leaf fluttered down and landed on the low wall of marble blocks that hemmed in the fountain. I wouldn’t have noticed it, except that it had a strange shape with long, sharp points like one of those Japanese star maples. But the only trees anywhere the fountain were lindens.
As I stared, two of the points curled into cylinders that reached and dragged the leaf around until the central point faced me. This wasn’t my doing. My mind was blank, my will disengaged.
The leaf lifted itself off the wall and the central point folded into a concavity that looked like an eye socket. I surged off the bench and smashed it down with my fist. Some passing tourists stared.
I turned around and there she was, standing by the bench like a mythical creature, an apparition or a dream.
***
Karla Raeth. Not the prettiest name for one who was not exactly pretty. But she was my Karla. Her petite frame swam beneath a flannel shirt. Her eyes were wide and frantic, her hair, longer than I remembered. Un-brushed. Greasy and stringy. She looked almost feral, like a girl raised by wolves.
Her cheeks were sunken, eyes rimmed with red. She hadn’t been sleeping or eating well, that was for sure. Grease soiled her jeans. Both knees were shredded and bloody. Her sneakers had no laces. Their tongues flapped free.
“Come!” she said. “We have to go.”
She had made no attempt to greet me. She didn’t even look happy to see me. I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. She looked so serious and scared. She turned her back to me and started passed beneath the columns that separated us from the adjoining neighborhood.
I grabbed my pack from the bench and ran to catch up with her.
“What’s wrong?”
“We have to leave Rome. Immediately.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Come.” She grabbed my hand. Her fingers felt rough and dirty.”
This was not at all the kind of reunion I had envisioned all those months in jail. Had I had fooled myself into believing that she shared the feelings I held for her? Maybe there was a reason she was always keeping a distance between us. It wasn’t all due to fate.
She looked at me sideways as we walked on hand in hand. Her expression softened. The beginnings of a smile took form.